


we thought we could hide from the light down here (we were wrong)

by orphan_account



Category: BioShock, The Hobbit (Jackson Movies), The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: Addiction, Canon-Typical Violence, Dragon Sickness, Fear of Death, Gen, M/M, Sad Ending, Stream of Consciousness, all kinds of shit, this will barely end at all, this will not end happy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-21
Updated: 2015-05-14
Packaged: 2018-03-08 11:51:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 22,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3208142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Thorin has to keep walking.</p><p>All of them do, and there's <i>fourteen</i> of them now, and that's a group, that's quite a group, a <i>company,</i> but things went to hell not long ago (how long ago? how long, Thorin, how long ago did you start to lose yourself in this bottom-of-the-sea hell? how long how long how long how long how) (he doesn't know) and they need to get out.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thorin (prelude)

**Author's Note:**

> This is going to be intense, angsty, bloody... Much as I love when everyone lives, you must admit that fics where that doesn't happen have their place.
> 
> Also: the heart of the Dwarves' part of _The Hobbit_ is a narrative about going home, about going through hell and highwater to get home, because home is worth reaching. I feel like this translates well into an AU where they're all trapped at the bottom of the sea and want to get back to the surface. Hope this fic is enjoyed.
> 
> Also also: this is not a fic with a clear Point A to Point B plot. It's more a collection of interlocking, vaguely chronological drabbles, each one detailing a thought process. I realise that is not to everyone's taste (and that 'hobbit fans who have also played bioshock' is a niche audience), but if you're still here, thank you for giving this odd little fic a chance.

1960; somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean

\--

Every second Thorin spends feels now like holding back, tucking craving behind his teeth like a secret he can save for later, like he can pretend he doesn't lose himself a bit more each time he gets to feel the siren-call of ADAM but: he has to keep walking.

All of them do, and there's fourteen of them with him now, and that's a group, that's _quite_ a group, a company ( _his_ company, nearly all of them employees of his, or employees' relatives), but things went to hell not long ago (how long ago? how long, Thorin, how long ago did you start to lose yourself in this bottom-of-the-sea hell? how long how long how long how long how) (he doesn't know) and they need to get out.

 _He_ brought them down here, _all_ of them. To work on Rapture's mass transit, to work on _trains,_ here at the bottom of the sea.

How could he have resisted, how could he have refused? His grandfather's railroad company (that Thorin inherited from his late father, his dead-in-the-war father) had become a _shadow_ of what it once was, an echo of its turn-of-the-century grandeur, of what his grandfather built during the Industrial Revolution, but: coming to Rapture, he could have _saved_ it, he was sure. He took his best and brightest, and those of their family that could assist, and he left for a mid-Atlantic promise.

And things had gone well. Undersea railways didn't _sound_ like the most logical idea but Andrew Ryan assured him that it could be done, and it was. It was done.

And things had gone well. They'd built, and repaired, and maintained.

And things had gone well.

Until they hand't.

Now there's no more  _prosperity_. There is only ADAM.

And ADAM craving is pain, it is, it's a bang-your-head-on-the-wall kind of pain and he's forgetting how to be afraid of that, forgetting everything but desperation.

The others don't _know_ yet, or he doesn't think they know. If they knew then _surely_ they would say something. In-between shooting splicers someone would suggest it may be a poor idea to follow someone half a splicer himself, _surely_ , he thinks, so they must not know.

He'll count that as a good thing and keep walking. Keep walking. Keep walking.

They've split up, their little group. Different ways, different paths, different chances to find something they can eat, something they can use to patch wounds, something they can fill their guns with so they don't have to get _close_ to the splicers (nobody wants to get close to the splicers) (it's not safe) (it's not comfortable) (they were human, once).

Thorin is with Bilbo, and Bofur, and Fili. Fourteen people attract attention, they travel in groups of three-or-four, groups of watch-his-back, groups of please-come-back. Hope, that's about all they've got, hope they'll come back, hope that they'll move forward. It's an empty kind of hope. The surface is a distant dream, maybe, they're all so far from sunlight and fresh air and not feeling an ocean on four sides even when eyes are shut tight.

Thorin remembers the first _bang_ of his shotgun and the resulting _thump_ of a splicer falling to the ground. They follow him, his company ( _his_ companyrespnsibilityfourteenpeopleon _his_ shoulders), and he leads them around and around and someone said the bathyspheres are _working_ again, that someone came _down_ (that someone could go back up?) (if even _one_ works that's one more, one more, one more than zero, a chance, if he can get his nephews back up, his nephews who should not have come down here, his nephews who should be back home where it's safe--).

That's enough, that thought, to push fourteen people through Rapture, to push a company. They've already been walking for days and Thorin feels they're pushing luck, nobody's died yet, that's luck, but maybe it's their smaller groups (less attention).

 _Mister Baggins,_ he wants to say to the shorter figure ahead of him, because Bilbo Baggins has been a comfort in this dark place, a possible friend before things went to hell and a steady source of support after so long without, _Mister Baggins,_ he wants to say, _Do you think the splicers are still people, Mister Baggins?_ He wants to ask, to say, _Mister Baggins_ , say _Mister Baggins,_ say _Bilbo_.

Footsteps fill the silence and they don't belong to Thorin or Bilbo or Bofur or Fili so they're a danger and at once four guns point toward the source and one-two-three splicers approach at a run and they're talking nonsense, always, and they're shot down, always. Four people with guns, three splicers without. Maybe they're not people. People would not have liked those odds, would not have been so desperate. So splicers aren't people and Thorin's half a splicer so Thorin's half not a person. Something to contemplate.

“You all right?” Bilbo asks as Thorin keeps his gun pointed at a corpse, one shot through the head (Fili's shot, good lad), one that will not be getting back up. Thorin takes a moment to register he's being addressed and slowly lowers the gun.

“Yes,” he replies, and his voice fills his mouth, like it doesn't fit.

Every minute he spends without ADAM he can feel his steps grow more unsteady and he is so tired, aching for ADAM or someone to catch him when he falls (either one, now). _Mister Baggins, I am afraid, I am afraid,_ but: those words won't fit in his mouth so he doesn't say them. They're not his words. The syllables squirm around his teeth or, no, that's his tongue. ADAM's lack is like a stickysweet patch of old fears, secrets he tried to tuck behind his teeth for later and----

> (waking up craving, walking and craving, held by the craving, the craving like a collar but nobody's hand is on the leash, there's just him there, holding himself, leading himself, tricking himself with the need for more more _more_ , boundtoADAMbeforeGodamen and he shakes, just a little, and hopes that Fili's frown doesn't mean he saw the shaking, hopes the frown is because of something else, anything else, if Fili starts to worry, well...
> 
> Can't make his nephews worry like that, can't make FiliKili hate him like that, the splicers aren't people, too ADAM-crazy, right down to every strand of DNA.)

\---- he gags on the taste of those secrets, and says nothing to Bilbo.

And they all want to go home. He points out a vending machine to the others and Fili goes over to see what state it's in, could it be hacked, is it safer just to buy what they need, oh, Uncle, is it safe is it safe is it safe is it safe no no no it's never safe.

“Hack it if you can,” he tells. Tells Bilbo, because Bilbo probably can. Nori's better at it but Nori's somewhere else and Bilbo's quick and clever and if any of them can, it's him, Fili's not quick enough and Bofur's hands are too clumsy. Two first aid kits and a few clips of ammunition for guns none of them are carrying. It's better than nothing. They'll add it to the pile, the pile that will form when everyone's back where they should be, the pile they've gathered, fourteen people all needing supplies, fourteen people, all on Thorin's shoulders, responsibility, fourteen people, counting himself (he has to put himself on his own shoulders because no one else will carry him and it feels, a bit, like carrying a mountain).

“Uncle, I hear something,” Fili says and _boom, boom, boom,_ like rocks falling, like thunder, like a heart. Or no, like none of that at all, just loud footsteps, closercloser.

Big Daddy.

They see the drill first, around a corner, then they see the girl, Sister, girl girl girl child girl monster girl.

Then the rest of the Big Daddy emerges, drill and diving suit all, and three sets of wide eyes look to Thorin for direction, look at Thorin who is looking at the girl the girl who harvests ADAM the ADAM that he craves and Fili sees his uncle's gaze and Thorin doesn't see that Fili sees but it's Bilbo who speaks, quiet, panicked, “Do we fight it?”

“No.”

That was Thorin, he finally found his voice, tore his eyes away from the child and ADAM-craving, ADAM-need, ADAM-sickness, tore his eyes away the child and held a pistol in one hand, waving it at the imposing figure as he gestures for the others to _run_ with his off-hand, distracts the Big Daddy long enough for them _go, damn it, go_ and finally, finally, finally sprints off just before a drill tears him apart. It doesn't. Tear him apart, that is. Part of him wishes it had. If he dies now in defense of his friends, he won't have to let the ADAM-craving keep hurting him. But he lives, and he catches up, and the Big Daddy doesn't chase him for long, its goal is to protect the Little Sister, not give hard chase to a man who hadn't attacked either of them.

He feels like he should be relieved. He isn't, but maybe he should be.

“Did you kill it, Uncle?” Fili asks, eager but reserved. Excitable, battle-loving youth meeting wariness (uncle-might-be-splicing-up wariness).

“On my own? I'm flattered you think so highly of my skills, Fili, but no. I just ran, it didn't chase long.”

“Probably for the best,” Bilbo says (sensible Bilbo Baggins who just wanted to live comfortably).

“ _Probably?_ ” Bofur laughs (out-of-danger-for-now laughter), and then gestures with a nod of his head toward a little group of splicers on the other side of a widow. “You'd want Thorin to try and help us against that lot after fighting one of the big guys?”

“When you put it that way...” Fili has to agree.

“Thought so,” Bofur says, a sure smile on his face. An easy one. Even down here at the bottom of the sea he can smile easy, like life is good, like life is worth living. Thorin envies that.

“Come on. Let's keep moving,” Thorin says, and the words sound, to him, like they've been yanked from the back of his throat, but no one else seems to notice.

Then they say nothing else, as they keep moving. splicers are easier to avoid when nobody's chattering away. It's a tense silence, interrupted only by bouts of gunfire and four sets of boots on the floor, that carries them back to where they promised they others they'd meet up.

 


	2. Bofur (overture)

_From the audio diary of a businessman named Thranduil Oropherion, 1959:_

> _It's hard to believe I brought my son down here. I should have known he wouldn't be safe. I should have guessed this wasn't the haven promised, that something lurked in the shadows of this city. Odd, that the stars are what I miss most, the way they'd flicker. Silver, like a coin. Starlight. Legolas talks about it, too, when he manages to speak._

 

 

 

\--

Bofur feels he shouldn't be surprised things went straight to hell. That's how things _go_ down here, and how they've gone since the start. Rapture was one of those ideas that sounds better on paper, right?

So he shouldn't be surprised that things aren't _going well_. When it was fourteen of them, it was _better_ , manageable, a little daunting but it felt doable and then they started going in _different directions_ with Nori taking some job he heard a rumour of, and Balin and Dwalin thinking it might be smarter to go through the farmer's market three days ago. No one had seen them since. Thorin and Bilbo went after them.

No, things were not going _well_ and there was always an _and_ and Bofur and Bombur and Bifur and Dori and Ori are creeping through hallways, guns aimed at shadows, and at dripping water, and at everything, because _everything_ is a potential threat, isn't it? Down here, miles away from the light of the sun.

(he never thought he'd miss the sun so)

“Maybe when they kill us,” Bofur begins, and he can all but _hear_ his cousin rolling eyes at him, “the splicers, I mean, maybe when the splicers kill us we'll get artfully arranged, like some of those corpses stuck to walls or hung from pipes.”

Ori forces a laugh, but Bofur knows he's just doing it because he thinks he's supposed to. Nobody else reacts.

It's hard.

Keeping the mood up.

He was better at it, once. Maybe.

Bofur's eyes no longer twinkle with mirth and his grin slips away when nobody's looking, thumb gliding over the safety on his gun, _click-click_. Too sudden, too present. The very force of his _aliveness_ seems to clash with how _wrong_ things feel, now, in Rapture, how the dead are stuck to walls or hanging from pipes.

Distant voices shake morbid thoughts away and Bofur lets out a sigh of relief at the fact that he now doesn't have to think up a better joke as two splicers rush toward them. Rush toward them and get gunned down, easily, by Bofur and Bifur. They react before anyone else gets the chance. Before anyone else has to _kill_ something. Some _one_. If the splicers count as someones. Bofur plays with the safety on his gun again.

 _Click-click_.

They have more experience with firearms, those two. What with Bifur being ex-military and Bofur working security so long.

“It's an art,” he'd said, back when there were still fourteen of them and Dwalin had given him an odd look, like he'd expected Bofur to be a worse shot than he was. And he'd laughed like summer and Bombur had given him that _look_ , but he knew that it helped because Bombur _smiled_ , and that smile _lingered_. Until the next time they were attacked, anyway.

His grin used to strike a chord in his brother. Now, even Bombur won't pretend it's not forced.

\--

They're attacked not ten minutes later and after the fight, Bofur starts humming, fingers tapping against the side of his gun as he walks as if working out leftover adrenaline is an activity that _normally_ takes the form of song.

\--

It's late at night when Bifur falls, and Bofur sees it out of the corner of his eye; watches his cousin drop to his knees and then further, further, out of his line of sight.

He's muttering _something_ so at least he's not _dead_ but the splicer clearly hit him hard or he wouldn't have gone down, Bifur does not go down easily, he does not can not will not. Bombur shouts _"Bifur!"_ so desperately that Bofur's heart plummets down to his stomach and further and he shoots wildly at the splicers surrounding his cousin. And it's all he can do to keep his senses enough to make sure he's shooting _above_ Bifur because clipping him by mistake will help no one.

Once they're dead, all the splicers, he rushes toward Bifur, the broken body that cannot _possibly_ be his cousin. But then Bifur turns, moves, _breathes_ , and Bofur is _laughing_ , a desperate, relieved sound, laughing and laughing and _laughing_.

\--

In retrospect, the desperate laughter should have been a warning. To himself, if no one else.

\--

They rest, they wait. Bifur's recovery is slow going but measurable. None of them trust Rapture's cures anymore, and even if the medical wing _weren't_ halfway across the city none of them would risk it. They scrounge up first aid kits and enough food to last them.

And then they wait.

The splicers mostly leave them alone once they've holed themselves up. Bofur takes out those that aren't smart enough to do so. Dori and Ori and oh, oh, dear Bombur, they help out too when the numbers threaten to overwhelm but oh, oh, _desperate_ Bofur, he does more of the work than he's used to.

“It's an art,” he says when anyone shoots him a worried look.

\--

Bifur recovers. And Bofur doesn't tell him he'd have faced down all of Rapture for him.

They're family, it goes without saying. He'd face down eternity for him.

Bifur would do the same for him, or Bombur. Bombur would do the same for him, or Bifur. It's what family does.

\--

They're on the move again, which is good because once Bifur starts to get better it's clear he won't sit, won't settle. Bofur can sympathise. He hands his cousin a thermos of cold coffee and swipes absently at the dust that had settled in old corners of rooms they pass through.

He wonders what time it is, up there. Where the sun is.

He wonders what time it is, down here. Where the sun isn't.

\--

He takes a bullet for Bombur.

That's what family is for, isn't it?

His brother cries, and Bofur can't find a joke. He wonders faintly, distantly, if _that's_ his biggest failing. Not the blood pooling under him or the fact that he knows the bullet hit his spine by the fact that he can't move anything from his neck down, none of that, just the fact that he can't lighten the mood, not even a little bit.

“ _Why_?” Bombur manages, _why die for me, I'm not you, I'm not useful like you are_.

“It's... it's an art,” Bofur chokes out, with a laugh, a _desperate_ laugh, as the blood pools beneath him and he feels distant, like he's _leaving_ but he still can't move. _It's an art,_ he says and he doesn't know if he means _killing_ or _dying_.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> bofur is a good source of comic relief. he probably helps keep morale up. naturally, that means i had to kill him early on.
> 
> also, i'll be using audio diaries to world-build in a similar way to what the game does. i'll be using both the dwarves that we're focusing on as well as other characters from the hobbit, so you can see what they were/are up to in this au. often, their fates will be left ambiguous.


	3. Glóin (serenade)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ah, here's the plot! or... the beginnings of it. and only three chapters in!

_From the audio diary of Thorin Oakenshield, 1956:_

> _My sister says she'll_ _be joining me down here soon. At last. She will be sending Fíli and Kíli down ahead of her to assist me with work but I'd be a fool not to admit that my grandfather's company wouldn't still be afloat without her. It's much less than it once was, but it would be lesser still without Dís. It'll be good to see her again, and the boys._

 

 

 

\--

It felt strange for less time than one might think, carrying a shotgun around an underwater hellscape and aiming at shadows _just in case_ but now it's become a comfort and Gloin isn't sure how okay with that he is. Not at all, probably, but maybe it'll get easier.

It's not like he's never held a weapon before.

And Gloin-with-a-gun is much safer than Gloin-without, than Gloin-with-empty-hands.

He focuses on thoughts of sunlight and home and keeps walking, one foot before the other. His brother's just behind him, the lads-- Fili and Kili, the _lads_ who _really_ ought to be someplace safe, they're barely more than children, barely older than his own _son_ \-- are up ahead, scouting out. Softer footsteps to attract less attention.

Gloin pushes thoughts of his son out of his head, because Gimli is a happy thought, and memories of his smile are best saved for moments of hopelessness. He needs anger now. Anger is a focus, something to hold onto. So, he is finding more and more, is the rage that's just a step beyond that.

There's a heavy clatter and Gloin aims his gun at the source of the sound, but: it's fine. It was just his brother, he'd knocked something over. Oin looks less than apologetic, more irritated than anything (at himself, at their circumstances, at the broken pipe for tripping him, as if the thing were sentient, and so on) and so Gloin doesn't say a word, just gives a heavy sigh. Half-deaf as his brother is, he can't blame the old fusspot for such a mistake _really_ , not when it's his fault his old brother's down here at all.

And it's  _Thorin's_ fault any of them are down here. Not that Thorin or anyone could have known what might happen. Rapture never sounded like a _bad_ idea, and the potential problems, the cons on the pro-and-con list that Oin had laid out when Gloin had brought it up, the _potential problems_ seemed minimal, with “something breaks, there's a huge flood, and everyone dies” sitting at the top of the list, with low enough odds. A worst-case scenario that might truly never come to pass.

And there was not, in fact, a flood. So their worst-case scenario did not come to pass. Something worse did. And it was not Thorin's fault, much as Gloin really craved a body to blame, someone _reachable_ , not like Andrew Fucking Ryan, who, of course, was off somewhere not dealing with any of this.

Gloin's a venture capitalist through and through, of course, and well-off, and very much _of_ Rapture's target demographic but for the moment he's fed up with the concept. He doesn't need the sweat of his brow _or_ utopia-- even in the hypothetical. What he _needs_ is Gimli, and home, and home, and home.

So he'll keep going, with thoughts of home. And he'll watch the lads, with thoughts of getting _them_ home. He'll keep going, aiming a shotgun at shadows _just in case_ and taking comfort in the weight of metal in his hands.

There's a footstep-sound around a corner and at once his shotgun is aimed there instead of at the shadows, awaiting the telltale incoherencey of a splicer ready to attack but it never comes. Fili and Kili both have guns aimed in the same direction but-- nothing. No more footsteps, no rambling, no attack.

“Hello?” Fili calls out, loud enough to be heard but not quite loud enough to carry far and nobody _expects_ an answer, certainly not a tentative voice calling back to them.

“Who's there? How many?”

And there's no _way_ that's a splicer, unless they've learnt the art of subtlety and deceit at some point between the last jumbled attack and this moment, a thought that Gloin, even inherently suspicious as he is, _very_ much doubts. It's _unlikely_ and so he calls back, “Four. And we've got guns.”

“I'm alone but well-armed,” the voice returns, footsteps announcing her approach, heavy as if she's stomping. She wants to be heard, doesn't want to show herself too quick and end up with a bullet in her from a spooked stranger, so she's clever _enough._

The source of the voice is still round the corner, in the next room and the four of them hold their guns tight, suspicious but unwilling to shoot _anyone_ they don't have to. There's been too much blood already, after all. Then there are a few clicking sounds, one that sounds like the safety on a gun and the next that Gloin can't identify.

A woman appears seconds later, a pistol in-hand but aimed, for the moment, at the ground. She's making it clear that she's only a threat if _they_ are and looking at her it's evident she's no splicer. Not a deformation on her.

Not a cut or bruise he can see, either, which either means she has friends to protect her or she's good at staying out of the splicers' way, staying _alive_. “I'm Tauriel,” she says, awkward in tone as if uncertain how to introduce herself in these circumstances. Gloin admits to himself he doesn't really know how to proceed either; with everything falling apart around them, how important _is_ courtesy?

But the lads are already grinning friendly, as if the fact that she isn't a splicer means she _must_ be safe to speak with, means she _couldn't_ mean them harm. Gloin aims his shotgun at shadows instead of the stranger and watches her with a wariness one might reserve for a bomb that might go off at any moment.

“I'm Kili, this is my brother Fili. That's Gloin there, and his brother Oin. We're, uh, heading through this way,” Kili is saying, and Gloin admits he's relieved to see the boy has the sense not to let anyone know about their attempted escape from Rapture, at least. If nothing else. “Is it safe?”

Tauriel hesitates, then nods. “More or less. As... as safe as it gets down here now-- I, ah, I have got traps set up for any splicers. This way should be clear for... a little while and I can show you where to step to get around them. Do you have food? It's easy enough to pass through if you know where everything is. Mostly bombs and rigged-up shotguns. Lots of tripwires. So. Food?"

Fili blinked, the sudden question mid-explanation catching him off-guard before he glanced back at Gloin and Oin, the latter of which shrugged. Gloin gave a slight nod, a subtle _it's okay to tell her that much_ and Fili smiled. “Yeah. A bit. Hungry?”

“Yes. If you give me enough for two days or so, I'll tell you how to get around the traps.”

“Sounds fair,” Kili said and the others agreed easily enough. Food to feed a single person for two days wouldn't deplete their stores. They didn't have much, but they also weren't yet in danger of running out. And Gloin knew they might be able to find more as they went, cans of beans people stashed in cupboards or vending machines that weren't taken for everything but the cords that kept them running.

This all feels to Gloin like a story they don't know the words to, but he's never been _bad_ at improvising. Kili pulls three cans of various foodstuffs from the pack he carried, a package of salted crackers, and some raisins, offering them to the woman who took the offered items and nodded, stepping backwards into the room she'd apparently holed up in.

“Tripwire here. Step at least a foot and a half over where the doorframe is. It's thin, hard to see.”

Kili nods, lifting his foot up and over, Fili following close to his brother, close as he could. Gloin comes next, followed by his brother who squints at the hair-thin wire. Tauriel simply nods, setting the food aside and glancing around, pulling long hair back from her face and looking the four of them over.

It's quiet. Tauriel purses her lips ever so slightly as if she's trying to decide whether to speak. And she doesn't say anything, until she does. “You look tired, all of you. Do you want to stay here for a while, to rest? I, I will lead you through the rest of the traps after but it's... safe enough here. If anything tries to sneak up on us... a splicer will definitely trigger a trap and we'll all know it's coming, if the traps don't put it out of its misery for us.”

Gloin wants to be suspicious.

He wants to put hands on the lads' shoulders and lead them on.

He wants to insist it's not _safe_ , that they have no way of knowing if she can be trusted.

He wants –

He wants a lot of things, Gloin does.

Instead, he nods, and Oin nods, and Fili and Kili nod. And they're all there, right there, four people alive. They've stayed _alive_ even after getting separated from their motley company of fourteen and so they can afford to rest. They can _afford_ to rest. They won't turn their back on the woman until they know she won't shoot them once they do, of course, but they can _stay_ there for a time.

He's tired.

That's a deciding factor, if he's honest. He's _so_ tired, it feels like he's been walking forever, feels like Saul gone to Damascus. So much of Rapture, vicious, twisting Rapture, wants to kill them (wants to kill _everyone_ ) and so. he. leans against the wall, tired but careful.

“We'll stay through the night. Tomorrow we move on.” Oin is saying and that's-- that's enough. It's _like_ a rest.

“Where will you go?” Tauriel asks.

“Home, if we can,” Kili murmurs.

And that is that, it seems. Gloin keeps his shotgun close at hand, aimed at shadows, and pretends this is a rest.

 


	4. Bifur (cantata)

_From the audio diary of an old man named Gandalf Grey, 1960:_

> _They've been wandering around in circles for days now and that won't do. Enough of the city has been damaged or blocked off that their route through is limited but they're going the wrong way, all of them. Trying to get to the bathysphere station, oh the stubbornness of-- If only they could see that there's something greater at work. Perhaps if I nudge just one of them in the right direction, the company will follow._

_\--_

Bifur feels a like he's touch better-prepared than the others. A touch isn't much, of course, but it's something. He won't say it feels _normal_ to shoot splicers in defense of his cousin-- his sole remaining family member, the only one left down here-- and of Ori and Dori, too, not _really_ , but it's not that much different from going to war, being in war. Just darker. Rapture used to be _better-lit_ but after everything that's happened, low lighting is the least of their issues, Bifur knows, Bifur _knows_.

He misses the sun, he supposes, but honestly, everyone misses the sun. He wants to go _home_ but he isn't sure where home is. His family's been fairly nomadic since he was young, displaced wanderers in the aftermath of the first Great War, and then the second. No, he isn't sure where home is, but he knows it isn't _here_. Though here was _supposed_ to be home, it was supposed a place to settle, maybe put down roots. Unconventional in location but fortuitous. _Of opportunity_. A capitalist's dream and Bifur knew what _that_ meant, that it couldn't allow for everyone to prosper, that someone way down here had to unclog pipes or repair toasters, but it would be a place to settle.

He certainly didn't expect his cousin to _die_ down here (no one did), shot in the back and stunned as the blood drained out of him, and he had to watch, and it reminded him of war.

And Bifur can't shake that away, those memories of war, of before-this, of rubble and wounds and gunfire and and and and and _and_.

He hasn't spoken right since he came back, of course, brain-damaged and all but mute. His cousins learnt sign language for him and that's enough, but there's only one cousin left now, he watched Bofur _die_. In the moments after, Bombur looked at him, desperate, sorrowful. A hollow grief in his voice, “Bifur, what do we do?” Bombur had asked and Bifur could not answer, fingers twitching, hands twisting over and under and around; his grief was outside him, restless, hammering at the sides of his heart and couldn't sign an answer.

It was Dori who had said, “We keep going.”

So they did.

\--

Somewhere, glass shatters.

Bifur wonders if he should start shooting yet, or wait until he can see what made that sound.

\--

“Do you think we'll find the others?” Ori asks as they walk along, voice low so as not to draw attention but it's clear he's not used to silence, needs to fill it with something other than gunshots and the hard _crack_ of Bifur's golf club on splicer skulls.

Dori doesn't respond and it's obvious he doesn't think so, thinks that everyone else is dead or soon-to-be, that the four of them might as well be dead themselves, but he doesn't say it.

Bifur knows he's thinking it, though. He's good at reading people. Has to be, has learnt to be. The fact that he can't speak means people forget he can _listen_.

Either way, it's Bombur who comforts the boy, a firm hand on his shoulder and a nod that shows more confidence than Bifur knows his cousin has in him. A comforting lie. “I'm sure we will.”

And Bombur's voice does not shake around the shape of that lie.

\--

There's a dripping sound in the distance somewhere and it's making Bifur nervous.

A flood would put them out of their misery, but it would be a terrible way to go.

\--

Bifur hunts through a desk as they stop to loot yet another office. He's unsurprised when he finds a gun there. He stopped _being_ surprised after the sixth or so. Now he just checks it for ammo, tosses two revolver rounds to Bombur, who slides them into a pocket for later.

Ori's digging through the file cabinet. Bifur wonders what that kind of optimism feels like, and if he ever had it. If Bofur ever had it. “One, two, skip a few,” Ori is mumbling to himself as he skims a file. “Another embezzler. Not that it matters now, but if we weren't fighting for our lives down here? Can you imagine?”

 _We'd never have been able to get into his office if things weren't this bad,_ Bifur signs, but Ori's eyes are still on the paper, so he doesn't see.

“Oh, Ori. Does that file contain anything useful?” Dori's asking, and Ori shakes his head.

“No. Not a thing. This guy's probably dead anyway.”

That's true enough. With the state of Rapture, _probably dead_ sums up just about anyone currently out of earshot. Survival odds are low, and now the splicers are diminishing in number too, quick as you like.

But that thought is rather large, and so Bifur pushes it aside.

They move on, five-minus-one people walking quick and quiet.

\--

“It's all right, Bifur. It's just me. It's just me.”

\--

 _We'll not find the others, won't live long enough,_ Bifur signs, out of Ori's line of sight.

“I know,” Bombur whispers. “But it's hard not to try and comfort him. Bofur always-- but now he--”

Bifur nods.

Looking at Ori, Bifur wonders, faintly, how _he_ could ever have been that young, and if he was ever half as brave.

\--

They walk, through the dark and the dust and the blood and the bodies.

They walk. Just them. And the water.

Bifur walks. Just him. And the water.

And his mouth trying to form one word:  
_Bofur Bofur Bofur._

\--

They've stopped to rest, barricaded a room with one door and laid out mats and blankets to sleep on. Bifur's on watch. Watch, which they do in two-hour shifts, and he's got an eye on the door. Stealing a glance back to the others he watches Bombur twitch in his sleep, like he's having a nightmare. He's not making a sound, though, so maybe he's okay and for a second Bifur thinks about reading stories to his cousins when he was small and they were smaller when his-aunt-their-mother asked him to watch them for a moment while she went to have a cigarette, thinks about-- _don't read that one, Bom hates it, here read this_ and _is that the one with all the bats?_ and _he'll be asleep before you finish a chapter either way but I thought you might as well read something he likes_ and _Bofur!--_ the way he'd felt so grown up, even though he was so young. He can almost recall that feeling, bring it back.

Like an echo.

He has the urge to pull a blanket up over his cousin's shoulders and that feeling is a little like looking over the edge of a cliff.

He doesn't do that, though. He already failed one cousin. He won't fail two.

Instead, Bifur reloads his gun louder than necessary and Bombur wakes up, disoriented. Bifur signs _your watch_ and lays his shotgun down next to him as he pretends he's going right to sleep.

And if Bombur had awoken from his nightmare half-shouting his brother's name, well, Bifur wasn't listening, back turned and double-checking his gun. He didn't hear a thing.

\--

The first time Bifur killed someone, he was in France. Paris or Bordeaux, Marseille or a little village a brief drive from Orléans, maybe. He killed a German with blond hair or maybe brown. He shot him from ten, fifteen, fifty feet away. The details run together.

The point is this: Bifur wants there to be a _last_ time.

The point is this: he is a veteran who has gone back to war, this time not in France, this time at the bottom of the sea.

The point is this: he touches the old scar on his head, and keeps going.

\--

“We're going to die down here,” Dori is saying. “There's no way the others could have survived, not here. And if they _are_ alive, they won't be for much longer.”

“They can't have lived,” Bombur agrees and Bifur keeps quiet as ever and watches them all, tense. Ready. Finger on the trigger of his gun as Bombur _says,_ “They can't have lived.”

“Neither can we,” Ori is muttering to his hands as Bifur aims his gun away from him, toward the doorway, “Neither can we.”

 


	5. Óin (ritornello)

_From the audio diary of a man known only as "Azog," 1958:_

> _All three of the gunmen I sent after Oakenshield failed. Either he's tougher than I thought, or the hired guns are unreliable. At first I assumed he must be paying them off, but I haven't seen any of them since, not a one. Oh well. Oakenshield will get his soon enough. The working class is rising, and I'll take his head eventually._

 

 

 

_\--_

Oin watches the way Fili and Kili accept Tauriel into their group without hesitation, like she's always been there, like there was a space just waiting for her. Gloin's more suspicious. Oin decides that if they're all trying to get out, taking one more person along won't hurt anything. It's been three days since she abandoned her trip wires and pipe bombs and ventured out of the safety of her makeshift base in order to help them and she's been _useful_. Quick, quiet, and a very good shot.

Skills that make her worth having around, in Oin's opinion, but what really solidified his approval of her was her ability to patch wounds. Not being the only one with medical training around would make his life much easier. She was a medical _student_ , before, not a doctor, but she has clearly had enough schooling to set Kili's broken arm, anyway, and to clean cuts, give stitches. She'd clearly been a good study during her school years. Foster daughter of some businessman she had to watch get beaten to death during the civil war.

Poor thing.

But it's refreshing, he supposes, to be around someone with medical training who _doesn't_ view the Hippocratic Oath as something closer to Hippocrates' Vague Suggestion. Someone who recalls ethics, recalls place-with-the-wounded, recalls healing without ADAM.

Nobody's taken an injury that can't be patched up with the contents of a first aid kit and some gauze just yet, but Oin worries that it's just a matter of time. They've been walking for days, after all, with minimal respite from splicers and leaky pipes and security systems. Locking themselves in secure-enough rooms and waiting only works for so long. They can't really _stop_ , see, no matter how much they might want to, they'll run out of food, out of water, go stir crazy. The lads in particular can't seem to keep still. They still dream of the surface, Oin supposes, of getting out, of going home. He hopes it's possible, but he's old enough that he leaves himself enough room for healthy doubt. The lads are still so hopeful, Fili and Kili both. They have that belief that if they just work hard enough, they can have what they want. Rapture hadn't beaten it out of them. Rapture probably just made it stronger.

Gloin can't do anything _but_ hope, Gloin is too afraid to list Gimli next to the sun and real trees and mountain peaks, add his son to the list of  _things we'll never see again_ and so Oin doesn't voice his doubt where his brother can hear.

And Tauriel, well, Oin can't tell what she's thinking. Closes her lips around the name _Leoglas_ as if it might slice her tongue if she says it too fast, as if it's the most precious sound her mouth will ever utter, as if she fears speaking it casually will strip it of all its magic. Her brother, she'd said, or foster brother. There's very little difference, and it all amounts to Tauriel not walking like she wants to leave. Rapture, that is. Her feet drag. She walks like she's biding time.

Gloin is waving his gun around again, which is something he does when he's worried, and Oin glances about. He doesn't hear anything, no footsteps, no shouts, no gunshots. His hearing isn't what it used to be but he hopes it's still enough that he'll be able to hear that much. But, no, nothing. His brother's just being twitchy. Gloin taps his fingers against the side of his gun, a rhythm in the tap-tap of fingernails on metal, eyes unfocused, ears straining.

“Stop,” Oin says and his brother snaps back to alertness in an instant.

“And you say you're _deaf_ ,” he retorts, half-teasing, like the old days.

“I can hear _that_ , you're _right there_.”

Gloin turns away, facing a doorway they're passing, aiming his gun inside just in case something decides to pop out. With his back to Oin, the old doctor can't make out quite what he's saying, so he can _pretend_ , if he wants to, that Gloin isn't muttering, “It's that lullaby ma used to sing.”

And he does. He does pretend he can't hear it.

The tune was gentle and lilting, he recalls, and he can almost, _almost_ hear the words in the back of his memory, cool and unassuming.

\--

They find someone to trade things with, later, a man who eyes the five of them suspiciously, eyes which keep flicking from Gloin, who's doing the negotiating, to Kili, who for some reason has the fellow's attention. He utterly ignores the rest of them. Oin doesn't complain.

He does not like this man; his half-wild eyes and the way he keeps scratching at his arm like he's trying to get something out from under the skin, it all  _unsettles_ the old deaf doctor. There are fresh scratches that couldn't have been made by anything but his own fingernails and there's blood caked at his cuticles, but he has food, and they have bullets. And they're hungry, ran out of food two days back and haven't yet found anyplace to loot.

The man is not a splicer, not like the mad ones anyway, but he's twitchy and he reminds Oin of a very small carnivore, all soft edges and hard lines and eyes that won't stop _assessing_.

He watches the way the man turns away once they've made their trade, brown and black clothing on brown and black walls until he is no more noticeable than the backdrop, the way his eyes shut as he loads his gun. Oin wonders why he didn't see it _coming_ but the sudden _bang!_ of the gun that sends Gloin to his knees, gasping and clutching his throat, has him _stunned._

> (and he's the only other one with a weapon out so it stands to reason that the next shot is for him, or maybe he was just standing too close to Kili. The man's hands are still shaking, he's shaking, like a _leaf_. Evidently he's less sane than they thought, willing to trade food for bullets just so he can shoot those who took his food, but he didn't bother getting all of them, so maybe he's just panicked, paranoid, maybe-- Oin's head is running through possibilities and pain but it doesn't really matter, does it?)

Whatever the reason, the man runs, slams a door shut behind him and _runs,_ before anyone can chance after him, and Fili's shouting, banging at the door as if it will do any good, and Kili is firing his pistol at the lock, and Tauriel is scrambling for forceps, bandages, alcohol, _bless her_ , she's going to try and save them.

The dust of this will settle, new ash from a new fire, and Oin doesn't worry, he's old, he was bound to die sooner rather than later anyway. It hurts-- getting shot _hurts_ more than anything else he's ever had happen to him-- but it's _okay_. Tauriel is lining up medical tools on the ground near to them and looking at those tools, unblinking. Oin's trying to find his voice through the pain, find the ability to make sound more complex than harsh exhales.

“Don't,” he manages when she reaches for him. “ _Gloin_.”

She nods and sets to work on his brother, who's still clutching his throat and _gasping_ but _his lungs won't fill_ , air _escaping_ with the blood. Oin knows it's hopeless but he wants the girl to _try_ to save his brother and he looks at the forceps and the bandages and the alcohol on the ground, adjacent to Gloin's blood and, like his brother's blood, they are a reminder that Oin can't save _anyone_ anyway, has his family's losses woven into him in a way one can't see.

Flaws, faults, weaknesses, words he can't hear. The blood loss is making Oin dizzy and he couldn't hear well to begin with, but if he strains, he can make out his brother's voice insisting, between choked gasps, between not enough air, “Get out and find Gimli. Tell him I love him.”

Can hear Tauriel's shaky, “No, no, _no, no, no.”_

Can hear Fili's banging on the door, on the walls, on a nearby table, on anything he can _kick_. He'll carry this like failure, like weight. That's what his uncle always did, carried every failure like a boulder, like Sisyphus, every day pushing that weight along only to watch it roll back down to the bottom of the hill.

Can hear Kili's voice, distantly, but the lad's too far off for him to hear what he's saying.

And then he can hear Tauriel once more. “Time of death, oh-nine-fifty.”

 _So Gloin dies before me,_ he thinks. _And isn't_ that _the worst of it?_

“Tauriel,” he's saying, as his own life leaves him, in the form of blood. He hadn't taken quite _as_ fatal a shot as Gloin had, but a liver-shot will still be the end of him, especially bleeding as he is (bleeding as he is, is, is, heart pushing all his blood out into his clothes and onto the ground, bleeding as he is). Even if Tauriel _stops_ the bleeding that'll only delay the inevitable. He needs to keep her distracted until he can _bleed out._ Can't let the young waste time trying to save the old. “Gimli's his son. Gimli is his son, a good lad. If you get out, tell him what happened to his father, okay? Don't let him _wonder_.”

She nods.

She nods and he lets out a defeated laugh.

He's old. He'd have died sooner or later anyway.

“You'll make a good doctor, Tauriel. You can't save everyone, but keep the lads from losing their heads, okay?” he tells her, waiting for her urgent nod.

"I'm sorry," he says to the dark, voice weak and wobbling. His eyes are closed; he opens them, looks at what's left of his brother. He hopes he gets to dream before he dies. One more dream as he bleeds out. Even a brief one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so an oin and tauriel friendship isn't what i foresaw writing but i like it a lot??? also it's been like two whole chapters since i killed anyone off so i felt this was overdue. sighs.


	6. Ori (duet)

_From the audio diary of Nori Rivers, 1960:_

> _Ryan offered me a job. Shouldn't have taken it but it seemed simple enough. Information, right? I can_ do _information, and he said he'd trade me words for words, match information with information. Straight aces, right? I thought so. As it turns out, Andrew Ryan isn't very forthcoming even when he comes forth. Wanted me to spy on the newcomer all Rapture's been buzzing about, some guy named Jack. Just watch. Head-on, right, flat-out? Well, I watched Ryan's_ son _march his way through this place. Bathyspheres are still bio-locked. Even if Thorin gets everyone there there's_ still _no way up. A lifelong learner is me._

 

 

 

\--

Ori is not _coping_  with Rapture at all.

Nobody is, of course, but Ori's an accountant. He's never seen bloody battle, his only experience with death was his mother passing when he was too small to remember. And the ADAM, oh, nobody could have prepared for the effects of _that_ , no. He's sticking close to Dori, who is also not accustomed to any of this, clinging to his brother's sleeve and matching Bifur's steps. He's sticking close to people who can protect him, he's checking the gun he's barely had to use, he's keeping an eye out... but mostly he's making sure his breaths are even. If he starts to panic, Dori will worry, make them all stop and rest. Again.

He's listening to the low rattle of his breath in his ears and keeps quiet. Each breath he takes, each moment, each molecule of air that comes into his lungs, that enters his blood, that is used by his body, that makes up his body, that makes up what he is.

They pass a corpse and Dori tries to keep Ori from looking but Ori does look, notices bruises and cuts and a pain-twisted face. Cause of death: stab wound. Manner of death: (another) murder. Ori lets Dori cover his eyes and slows his steps so he doesn't trip. Until they've passed the corpse. Until they've walked on, walked faster. Ori lets Dori guide him on. Dori has always been there for him. Nori, too, but they lost track of him a while ago and Ori pretends that doesn't mean his brother's probably dead.

Nori was there for him, once. Those were nice times but now he still has Dori, and optimism.

He has optimism.

Sometimes. Sometimes he doesn't.

It's hard to keep it up, that optimism, that belief that Nori's alive and they'll all make out out of there, _safe as houses_. Watching Bofur die, it was a reminder. That every corpse in Rapture used to be somebody. Every splicer, too.

And Ori, who never asked for any of this, keeps close to Dori, close to Bifur, close to Bombur, and walks. On and on and on. And somewhere along the line, he kills someone. Kills a splicer. Blood that is not Ori's drips from the butt of Ori's gun where he'd brought it down on the head of the one who'd attacked Dori. He should have _fired_ , maybe, but the thought of pulling the trigger felt way too _visceral_. Smashing metal into a head was even more _visceral_ , and probably worse than shooting would have been, it turns out, but he's shaking too hard to think of what he _should_ have done.

He's an _accountant_ and he never asked for any of this.

But in that moment, he hadn't thought of _that_ , he only thought of Dori and how much he loves Dori, and how he can't lose his brother.

He doesn't know what time it is ( _which_ time it is, which fight, the first time or the second time or the fifteenth time) doesn't know, just knows that it's a fight and he killed someone.

He laughs, Ori does. He laughs, a terrified laugh, a panicked laugh, not a joyful one, and it feels like bones.

\--

It's as they walk that they hear voices and footsteps and Bifur's already drawn his gun, but Dori and Bombur are gesturing for him to put it away because they _recognise_ those voices and after a moment, Bifur does, too, and Ori's eyes alight with hope as they round a corner and find-- _find_ \-- Fili and Kili and they have a woman with them that Ori doesn't know but it doesn't matter, they've found more of their-- of the company. Real people. People they know. Human beings who haven't either spliced up or locked themselves away in anything resembling a bunker.

“Ori? Dori? Wha-- _and_ Bifur and Bombur!” Kili is exclaiming and at once, all at once, it doesn't feel, anymore, like Rapture will swallow them whole. Ori's eyes are alight with the knowledge that people have survived. That Nori might still be out there. He swallows his questions, for the moment. Swallows them down, and something in him is satisfied.

“Is anyone else with you?” Dori is asking and then, suddenly, Fili and Kili have to explain they've _lost_ people.

Oin and Gloin both, and at once the weight of miles of ocean fits itself back onto Ori like a migraine and his breath hitches. As Dori tries to explain how they lost Bofur in a way that won't make the dead man's kin miserable all over again, Fili goes over to lay a comforting hand on Ori's shoulder, and Ori thinks it feels, a bit, like loss. On a smaller scale.

They're introdcued to Tauriel. And they decide to move on together, bigger group or no.

 _Safety in numbers,_ Ori thinks, recalling Dori's words, though he can't remember when Dori actually said that.

 _That'll get you killed. More people means someone's more likely to turn on you._ And those words belonged to Nori, once. They fit right in his mouth.

_Only among thieves. Or, wait-- don't you like to say thieves have honour?_

_It's a_ thief's _honour, Dori. Different from yours. Anyway, suit yourself, and your numbers. I'll watch your back, always have._

Ori misses him.

As they walk, he misses him.

As they walk, he misses everything that once was.

He's never getting anything back, not his life, not his bloodless hands, not Nori.

Once upon a time Ori used to think Nori was something like Prometheus. _Think fire._

Maybe a part of him still does.

–

“You could come with us, after,” Fili is saying out of nowhere, interrupting Ori trying hard not to think about why words scribbled on walls are getting more common the further they walk toward the bathysphere station. Fili's voice startles him.

Ori doesn't hide the startled look, turning to give Fili an expectant one instead.

“After this,” Fili says, “when we get home, you could come with Kili and me. We're planning on moving to the middle of America somewhere. _Nowhere_ near the ocean. Starting over. You could get a new numbers job and pretend you've never heard of Rapture and Andrew Ryan, never even been to the Atlantic.”

And Fili looks like he wants to say more, but seems to reconsider.

“Dori could come too,” he finishes, instead of whatever else he was going to say.

“Maybe,” Ori responds. “I'd like that.”

(That may or may not be a lie.)

(What is not a lie, what Ori is certain of, is that there will be no “after this.”)

 


	7. Fíli (cabaletta)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **suicide tw**

_From the audio diary of a man named Bard, 1958:_

> _Bain says he saw Tilda today, but I'm not so sure. Maybe I just don't want to believe it it, knowing what they do to the girls they have. At first it was orphans and everyone decided they could turn a blind eye. But I haven't seen my youngest in days. If their mother was still with us she would--_

 

 

 

\--

Fili dreams about pressing fingers to Gloin's blood-covered throat, or Oin's startlingly cold-and-still wrist, and whispering, “I'm sorry.” Then his fingers stiffen. _He's_ dead, a corpse. He's himself and his father and Oin and Gloin all.

He doesn't know why this nightmare is so recurring. He wasn't the one who had to feel for a pulse only to find them both lacking one.

He does feel like it was his fault they got shot. It probably wasn't, but he can't shake the feeling.

\--

They've stopped for the evening. Fili hears his brother talking to Tauriel again, voices low and heads together as they whisper to one another, quiet enough that Fili wouldn't hear them if he weren't eavesdropping just a bit.

Not much. Just a little.

Enough to hear Kili whisper, “Why won't you come back to the mainland with us? Know you don't _want_ to stay down here.”

“Legolas,” Tauriel responds, same as she always does, that answer isn't changing no matter how Kili phrases his question. “Would you leave your brother behind, if you thought there might be a chance you could save him?”

“No, no you're right. If we got separated... until I saw Fili's body I'd keep looking until I found him. I... you're _right_. Hadn't thought of it that way.”

Fili isn't sure if that's a comfort.

\--

He doesn't know when he first noticed it, the way Kili's fingers twitched on the trigger of his gun, when pulling the trigger stopped being _enough f_ or Kili. When he watched his brother, watched _Kili,_ became so desperate to _do something_ , desperate to stop feeling _helpless_. He doesn't know when the first time he caught sight of his little brother splicing up actually was. But even though he doesn't know when it started, he knows he's been trying so hard to ignore it since.

(talking him out of it hadn't worked)

(now it's too late, he's)

(he's what?)

( _Kili's addicted_ )

( _I know, Tauriel, I know. But I don't know what to do about it_ )

\--

When they first arrived in Rapture, sent ahead of their mother who had to tie up loose ends and paperwork, Fili hadn't known what to think of the underwater city, with all its metal and artificial lights, new and shiny and solemn, with water outside every window. Back home, both boys saw the sun and sky and knew their place on the earth.

They'd worked hard, and listened to their mother, and usually had soot or grease or dirt or grime under their fingernails. The company their uncle inherited from Thrain was the same as the one Thrain inherited from Thror in name alone, and by the time Fili and Kili were old enough to take part, they were no strangers to hard work.

When they first arrived in Rapture, there was a symphony of salt water and promises and Fili remembers his hands drying out in the re-purposed air.

When they first arrived in Rapture, Kili had bitten down on his tongue to keep from letting his mouth fall open in awe but Fili had seen it on his face. Kili kept pace with his brother by the tips of his fingers.

When they first arrived in Rapture, Thorin steadied Kili's wanderings and Fili's wonderings.

When they first arrived in Rapture, Fili had tried to lay a foundation.

Kili was enthralled, right from the start. Fili, ever the slightly-more-cautious elder brother, was not. He was wary. He had to be wary, because Kili wouldn't be.

\--

In retrospect, Fili is not the least bit surprised when Kili starts splicing up. He just really, _really_ wishes he was.

\--

Fili dreams.

Nightmares, where he's watching people die. People who have _already_ died, and people who haven't. Sometimes it's Gloin, Oin, or his dear dead dad. Sometimes it's Ori, Bombur, Tauriel, even Kili.

(those are the worst ones)

People are always dying in his dreams.

And they always start the same, more or less. He's in Rapture, not Rapture-as-it-is, but Rapture-as-it-was, right when he and his brother had first arrived. Better-lit and safer-looking, back when the whirring and beeping of the security systems comforted him. And then someone dies, and suddenly the only light is coming from bioluminescent fish outside the windows, or old, damaged light bulbs, or vials of ADAM. The details are gone by the time he wakes up. But the point is this:

people die

in his dreams, people die

and in the vanishing light, he can see his hands, his useless hands who can't save anyone anyway.

Moments later the light is gone and, oh, darkness slides in to take its place, silent, slick, serpentine, stealing the breath from Fili's lungs.

That's usually when he wakes up.

He doesn't know what those dreams mean, but he's sure his mind's trying to say  _something_. Rapture digs its fingers into Fili's soul, twisting around it and warping things he once knew for fact, and he's so scared that the city will take his brother, too, and he hopes he'll still have it in him to be surprised when that happens.

Ori stays by his side, helps him keep up his good humour with sense and numbers, but once in a while, the accountant shoots a splicer right in the gut and Fili just laughs and laughs.

Bifur spares him a concerned look, but signs nothing.

\--

It was a love story: Thorin and Rapture. Or maybe it still is. Fili isn't sure if his uncle's alive or dead, nor is he sure it matters. Does the story end when Thorin does?

Either way, it's a love story and Fili watches Kili fall for the city in much the same way. He's worried, now, that Kili won't leave when they get to the bathysphere station.

If he's lost something to doses of ADAM and stubborn Tauriel. Fili doesn't know who or what to blame anymore. Not Kili. Never Kili. It's his fault, probably, but Fili can't hold it against his little brother, Kili who just didn't want to feel desperate anymore.

When they stop again, another rest (have they really been walking all day? it's stopped feeling like it, not that it matters; one night is much like the next, another night another terror) he decides he's overdue for a walk. Not far. Never far. That's not safe. Stays within shouting distance.

He sits in an empty, echoing room, holds his head in his hands and says to the breathing, poisonous city, “It was only ever _you_ and _them_.”

Maybe it doesn't matter whether Thorin's breathing or not, he's been dead since he came down here, and it just took Fili until now to realise it. He laughs at the discovery. Maybe Kili's been dead that long, too.

And all of them. Every single one.

Maybe it doesn't matter. If Fili's dead now, broken, and if he's been that way since he came down, he's got nothing left to lose.

\--

Or maybe he does.

The telltale footsteps of the Big Daddy shake Fili to the core, but it's the Sister that his brother's focused on. ADAM-starved Kili, splicing up to keep himself and everyone safe, ADAM-starved Kili who's staring at the girl, the girl who harvests ADAM the--

Fili's seen this before.

“Run,” he's whispering as Kili takes aim, his pistol pointed right at the diving helmet that presumably keeps the monster safe.

Kili's startlingly accurate, but Fili can tell he'll need stopping power to kill one of these things. None of them have ever _tried_ before, of course, mostly they keep out of the way of those thundering footsteps and the almost-girls that follow them.

Evidently, not anymore. “ _Run!_ ” Fili's shouting now, and Bombur and Bifur and Dori and Ori and Tauriel turn to go. No _sense_ fighting, not _this thing._

“ _Kili!_ ” he's shouting, louder, desperate.

“No!” Kili finally shouts and there's a _bang_ as he fires his pistol. The lights on the diving suit turn red, a warning, before the Big Daddy charges at them. Bifur shoots, Bombur dives for cover.

Dori grabs Ori and all but throws him behind an overturned table. Some semblance of protection. The closest they've got in a mostly-empty and very open room.

Tauriel shoots.

Fili shoots.

If they don't, Kili will die.

So they do.

There's gunpowder in the creases of his hands, which strikes Fili as an odd thing to notice, but notice he does, looking at his hands which are holding the gun which he's using to protect his little brother. Fili and Kili against the world. Or, at least, a terrifying enemy.

(a question: is that enemy the Big Daddy, or is it the ADAM?)

(a question: does it matter?)

(an answer: this story can only end one way)

Fili looks down at his hands, which are now tools of destruction, rather than construction. The dirt of a hard day's work replaced by lines of gunpowder.

He considers hiding.

But, no, he wouldn't. The Big Daddy's focused on him because he's got a bigger gun, he's making more noise, he's _drawing its attention, thank you very much_ , and it seems to spare glances (maybe, hard to tell in that suit, but it _seems to spare glances_ ) at Bifur, at Dori, because they're shooting it, if only in defense of their respective family members. Kili is reloading behind Fili.

And then: _bang!_ and that's Ori's gun, isn't it?

Fili watches the man (not man, not anymore, not in _that_ ) turn toward young Ori and he's yelling _no!_ or he thinks he is. That could be anyone's voice.

Not Dori's, though, Dori is very clearly yelling, _Don't you dare! Don't you dare touch him!_ And that's different. That's not _no_ so it's not him.

It doesn't matter, though, who yelled what.

(the end result is the same)

(and Dori's howling grief trumps everything)

(the Big Daddy finally falls, and Fili can distantly make out the shape of Kili running toward the girl, the girl who harvests--)

(if he shuts his eyes he can pretend he can't see, and pretend that not knowing is salvation)

He goes to Ori, stands over him. Over what's left of him. Those drills don't leave a whole body behind every time. They tear people apart. So he stands over what's _left_ of Ori, and it's like his dreams. His gunpowder-dusted hands are useless. “I'm sorry,” he's saying, because he feels he should. It's not his fault, not totally, but he should have done-- something.

He clenches his fists, tight as can be, and pretends that digging his fingernails into the skin of his palm so hard he's drawing blood is _salvation_. He presses his fingertips to his eyes and wonders if he's lost Kili already, or not. If there's much Kili left at all. If it matters.

\--

It's later, and Kili and Tauriel are sitting on one side of the room. Dori and Bifur and Bombur are on the other. Fili stands by the door, upright and rigid as a wooden nutcracker soldier.

Finally, Bifur is standing up, walking over to Fili, pressing a revolver into his hand. Not one any of them have used before. Probably Bifur's backup, in case something happens to his shotgun. Fili looks at it curiously.

 _We thought it should be you,_ Bifur signs.

“Thought what should be me?” Fili is demanding.

_Who tells him to go, and puts him down if he will not._

“I'm not putting my fucking _brother_ down,” he growls, voice low so Kili won't hear, and Bifur looks unfazed.

_Hope he walks away, then. If he attacks another diver, who will die for his mistakes next? Bombur? Tauriel? You?_

“He won't.”

_You can't promise that._

“He _won't_ , Bifur.”

_He will. Leave with him if you must. We will miss you, but either he walks away, or he leaves in a box._

Fili can't speak, can't find _words_ of any sort.

 _When someone comes to collect the dead down here,_ Bifur finishes. And the worst part is that Fili can't even blame him. Bifur is protecting Bombur. He's protecting his _family_. Fili can't hate him for that. Not even if he wanted to. Loyalty to Thorin as an employer and Fili as an extension of that employment, _that_ can only go so far. Kin _has_ to come first.

Fili takes the gun.

His hands shake.

His hands shake because he is a fool.

His hands shake because he knows precisely how this will end, knows he would do anything for Kili, even now. Give up his own heart and soul, and pretend that's absolution. Pretend his love is salvation.

“Kili,” he says, crossing the room. “I need you to go. They'll kill you if you don't. Tauriel? Watch him. Please, Tauriel. Watch him. Keep him safe. Find your Legolas. Kili will help, I bet, he sure isn't going to _leave_ now. I know he's not himself but he-- he cares for you, that's good, right? Splicers remember things like that, I think.”

“Why can't you keep him safe?” Tauriel is asking and Fili's hands shake.

Maybe his hands shake because he's decided and he has decided _no,_ and the weight of that _no_ is too heavy to bear. Maybe his hands shake because there is _always_ something left to lose. Maybe his hands shake because he's afraid.

“Promise me, Tauriel,” Fili is saying as he raises the gun to his temple and fires.

He doesn't hear her answer.

He just knows that _now_ he can be  _sure_  he's out of things to lose.

\--

It's the only way, he thinks. His final thought. Kili wouldn't have left their group without him, just as he wouldn't have left without Kili if their positions were reversed, and Fili was too scared to leave the rest of them. And too scared to try and stay. There's always something to lose, always.

Or, well, maybe not so much anymore. loss of life is the end of it, it must be. 


	8. Dori (intermezzo)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This fic now comes with a playlist, courtesy of a friend of mine.
> 
> http://8tracks.com/shvanna/requiem-for-rapture-a-hobbit-bioshock-au-mix

_From the audio diary of Mrs. Dis Durinson, sister to Thorin Oakenshield, 1958:_

> _Rise of the working class, that's what they're saying this will be. Class inequality is a thing of the past, they'd like to believe, but it isn't as easy as all that. I'm not fool enough to think that my brother and I haven't been lucky here, haven't had more than our share of luck. I know that we're doing well because this place caters to what our father left us, what his father left him. The middle class is rising, they say, as if that's a new concept. As if rebellion doesn't always end in blood and riots. Only a fool would trust Andrew Ryan farther than they can throw him, but this other fellow talks a bit too pretty for me to trust him any further. They say a wicked man who is also eloquent is the most dangerous of them all._

 

 

 

\--

Dori is a failure.

That is all he can _think_ of, his failure, his failure to save his little brothers from Rapture falling down around their ears like it has been. Nori is gone and he watched Ori die. Now it's just him, and a distant dripping sound, and his footsteps, all of it whispering _guilty, guilty, guilty_ , a verdict for his charge of _failure, failure, failure,_ to which he pled  _no mercy, no mercy, no mercy._

The group with whom he travelled split apart a few hours back and he's _already_ letting the quiet get to him.

But Bifur and Bombur will be fine without him, Bifur still has someone to _protect_ , after all, and Dori wishes him luck, wishes him _well_. Hopes Bifur can succeed at the thing Dori failed at. At protecting.

Kili and Tauriel went their own way, with some prompting from Bifur, with agreement from Bombur, and cold silence that spoke volumes from Dori. The lack of Fili will weigh on Kili's heart like a weight, like lead dropped into his chest, behind the sternum, Dori knows it must. The loss of a brother is worse than anything, he knows, he _knows_. Nori is gone and he watched Ori die. But he cannot feel more than pity for Kili, couldn't even bear to look at the boy as he and Tauriel took a left turn when everyone else went right, couldn't bear to _look_ at the one who cost him a brother. Still can't hardly bear to think of him.

Dori walks, and he doesn't know where he's going but he knows that he can't head toward the bathysphere station alone. Nori is gone and he watched Ori die. There is nothing left for him in Rapture or out of Rapture or anywhere else, and he was not made for being alone. So he walks in the wrong direction and wonders how long he'll last in his lethargy.

\--

He was not meant for this, for this _being alone_. He was _never_ meant for it. Perhaps, then it's fate that finds Dwalin for him. He'd never had much interaction with Dwalin before, knew him as a friend of Nori's and little else, hardly spared him a passing thought. A friend of Nori's and an acquaintance of Ori's and not even that to Dori, but Dwalin is just a little bit familiar and nothing else is and so he stands in the doorway and watches the man. Dwalin leaning against the wall, Dwalin's gun resting in his hand as he dozes. Stands in the doorway and watches Dwalin until Dwalin wakes up, then stands up, then checks his gun, and finally, _finally_ notices Dori, who has been standing in the doorway for more than an hour.

Dori smiles.

Dwalin lets out shaky breath (a sigh of relief that the person-shape is a person and not something less lucid) and smiles back, tentative. As if he's worried Dori will lunge at him or take out his pistol or hit him over the head with all his strength or _something._ But Dori doesn't do any of that, he only smiles. It's a weary smile.

But he was not meant to be alone.

“I expected you to be with your brothers,” Dwalin is saying, and Dori is standing in the doorway, still, feeling much like a body thrown against a wall, like a body waiting to be thrown against a wall. He isn't sure if Dwalin's words are the act of throwing, or the act of throwing is the fact that now he has to _explain_.

“They're-- I watched Ori die,” he manages, and his body feels like the way his mouth hangs open just a little bit after he says _die_ , feels like that empty space.

“I'm sorry,” Dwalin says, and Dori can tell he means it, and it _helps_ , in a way, the sympathy of it. Saying it aloud, he feels less like the empty space in his mouth and more like skin echoing bruises.

It is something like an improvement.

“And Nori?” Dwalin prompts.

“Haven't seen him in days. I want to hope-- but I don't want to _keep_ hoping only to discover-- If only I had stopped him running off I... I'm so worried about him... if he's even...” he trails off. He can't _manage_ it. Instead he turns the conversation toward Dwalin. “And where's your brother?”

“Lost track of him near Neptune's Bounty. I just have to keep hoping he's okay. Balin's tough, you know. Tougher than he looks. But on his own? I'm worried. Want to worry together?”

Dori almost laughs at that.

_“Yes.”_

\--

When Dori was eight or nine, in science class, he dissected an owl pellet, pulled out bits of rat bones with tweezers, bit by bit, bone by bone. He glued them back together with the help of the boy whose desk was adjacent to his. He's always had that sort of patience. He dealt with everything the way he dealt with that tiny little skeleton. Carefully, and piece by piece.

He hopes that it's enough, always has. Nori had needed patience, always a troublemaker. Ori had just needed quiet. Dori could be whatever his brothers needed. He was not meant to be alone.

But now Nori is gone and he watched Ori die.

Dori feels like shattered glass.

\--

Dwalin falls alseep faster than Dori can, and Dori envies him that.

He wishes he could still remember restful sleep, sleep that is not interrupted by images of a body torn to bloody bits. When he wakes up (silent but gasping) for the second time that night, he decides to pace the room. He'd never been the sort to _pace_ , that was always Nori, but _now_ Dori paces the room, his footsteps quiet, the slow click of his gun's safety the only real sound, and even that not enough to wake Dwalin. There's nothing to shoot, but he feels better with the gun in his hands. He hates that a gun now feels like safety. Oh, no, he was not meant to be alone, it's making him _twitchy_.

He's still not used to carrying a gun, really, unused to the way its cold metal slides against the skin of his palm each time he adjusts the weight of it, the way the trigger feels against the tip of his finger. He is not used to needing to defend himself this way, with brute strength and cold metal.

He paces the dark and silent room, watches the soft flickering light of an old lamp with a half-burnt-out light bulb. He tries not to feel like the light bulb. He keeps his steps quiet so he doesn't wake Dwalin and _sighs_ , tired. He'll feel this later, this lack of sleep. Once they begin walking again. He isn't sure he cares. It's hard to care about much, now that Nori is gone and he watched Ori die.

\--

“We'll find Balin, and Nori too. Neither one's weak, they'll have _lived._  We'll find one, then we'll keep looking until we find the other,” Dori is saying, because quiet comforts are what he _does_ , they're his _way_. His voice meant for soothing nightmares and hands made for reassuring little brothers. Dwalin's a head taller than him, sure, but he's a younger brother worried. And Balin is not here to hold him.

Dori places a hand on Dwalin's shoulder and pretends that he thinks it's enough.

“And if we don't?” Dwalin asks.

Hearing the way Dwalin's voice stiffens, shakes, words falling as quick as a stone dropped from the edge of a cliff, syllables like pebbles hitting hard earth, Dori shakes his head. He is so afraid, Dwalin, and he doesn't show it well, with his voice like gravel and his upright posture and his clenched fists, but Dori can tell; Dwalin's fear whispers to something in Dori, the part of him that needs to _take-care-of-_ full-stop.

“We will. We have to.”

Or _Dori_ has to. He has nothing else left, but his hope that Nori is still out there, this hope like a hand on his neck, like fists and necks like skin that blossoms with bruises and the reminder that he is so far from brothers and home, and that now those are separate concepts, brothers and home, now that Nori is gone and he watched Ori die. Maybe they'll be separate forever now, maybe there are no brothers, maybe there is no home.

 


	9. Kíli (medley)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> if i ever get around to writing the bioshock-2-ish sequel to this with frodo and the fellowship, i'll explain what's going on with legolas. if i don't get around to it, well, let's all close our eyes and pretend that since he's not in this fic proper, that means he's okay.
> 
> also, this chapter's very non-linear. trying to capture kili's current headspace requires it.

_From the audio diary of a young man named Legolas Thranduilion, 1959:_

> _"Those who are willing to be vulnerable move among mysteries." I think about how Tauriel read by the light of a candle once things started getting-- how they are. She lit candles because she said she could close her eyes and pretend it's starlight, but she is no longer here. My father spoke of darkness, things lurking in shadows, but when I find Tauriel again, we won't have to worry about that. Everything in the end is made equal by the water._

 

 

-4-

Bits of Kili keep falling off. He tries to keep them all, each and every one, but he isn't sure he can find them now that they've dropped off, _intangable, all in his head_ , but he searches.

He misses himself like an ache. He is stupid. ADAM was not worth any part of him, not like this.

 

-11-

_Kili, Kili, Kili, they'll write stories for the two of us when we're both dead._

_About your broken fingers and hungry veins. About the gunshot that tore open my head._

_Kili, Kili, Kili, can you not see, o Kili wherefore art thou?_

_When we're buried and withered and gone, all gone--_

Or. No. That's not right, that's stupid.

 

-8-

They find Balin, Kili and Tauriel do, and Kili wants to collapse against his pseudo-uncle and shut his eyes and pretend Balin can make it all better, like clever Balin could make all the dangerous parts of the world disappear.

Instead he asks, “Where's Dwalin?”

And Balin says, “We were separated.”

“How? He's your brother.”

“I know, lad. I know. But you're without your brother, too, and I can't imagine that separation was intentional.”

“No. It--  _wasn't_. He shot hi-- he got shot in the head.”

Tauriel looks back and forth between them, and says nothing. Kili wonders if she thinks she has no place in their conversation. Kili doesn't know if she does or not, just knows Balin is looking at her as if he's waiting for an introduction and at _last_ she speaks. “I'm Tauriel.”

“And I'm Balin. Thank you for taking care of him, lass,” Balin tells her and her eyes flicker back and forth between the two men.

“I'm sorry I couldn't do better.”

 

-5-

Tauriel holds him when he cries and he doesn't know if he's crying because he _hurts_ or crying because he's losing everything but pain.

Tauriel does what she can.

He thinks he loves her for it.

 

-2-

When things started going bad, right at the start of Rapture's civil war, his mother used to try and keep him and his brother _home_ , remind them of the value of their lives, and he'd listen to the soft murmuring of her voice. Sometimes she prayed. Mostly she just told them they'd be fine if they kept out of the way, that this would resolve itself. He didn't know, at the time, that God is dead and that things can't resolve themselves while ADAM is a factor.

Now he knows.

ADAM treats everyone differently, Kili's heard. To him it was a jolt of feeling stronger than he had words for. If he had to try he would say it was like this: falling, bleeding, being born.

Dying.

Losing Fili felt worse. Even stronger, and he doesn't have the words for that either. His brother put a gun to his own head so Kili would have a reason to _go_ and to Kili it felt like this: weakness, fear, hurt.

Dying.

What is it, to be without Fili? To be brother to someone who is no longer breathing. What is he?

Dying.

It was like losing a piece of himself. And how is he supposed to learn to lose bits of what makes him Kili?

 

-1-

Kili's footsteps drag and Tauriel can't meet his eyes. He thinks, briefly, about the Little Sister that he-- that he hurt. Tauriel stopped him from taking more ADAM than what was in the contraption she carried, but, oh, he'd come so close to doing her real harm.

He did enough, though, he supposes. He supposes. He supposes.

 

-9-

Kili watches Tauriel as she frets. She's quiet about it, but Kili can tell, by now, when he focuses right, can read her moods like they've known each other forever. Sometimes she's hard to focus on, like trying to count a flock of birds against a sunset. But he can tell she's fretting. He thinks she wants to look somewhere else for Legolas, try a different part of the city. He isn't stopping her, but he can tell she's staying put  _because_  of him, because he won't leave Balin, who is going to the bathysphere station (the place Tauriel _will not go_ until she has her foster brother with her once more) to wait for Dwalin.

He doesn't know what to do. It's hard to pick between someone he cares for and--  _well_.

Someone he cares for.

Tauriel manages to pull herself to her feet, still fretful, closes her eyes tight, and Kili ignores the rust-smell of blood that lines the inside of his nose and mouth like the unmaking of an injury. Or maybe the birth of one. He doesn't know. He's tired and he hurts everywhere and he knows he's falling apart without ADAM. Literally. Falling apart at the sinew-seams. “Go,” he says to her, to Tauriel, who wants to go.

She turns to look at him. “I had assumed you were sleeping.”

“Go,” he says again, to the shape of her, and to the dark, voice weak and wobbling. He wants to shut his eyes but if this will be his last glimpse of her he doesn't want it to be a memory of eyes shut tight, “find your brother.”

Wrapped around the track marks on his arm are the unspoken words:  _because one of us should have a big brother with us._

“I'm sorry. I want to be here for you, Kili, but I can't just run away from this-- from Rapture,” Tauriel says to him and he shakes his head.

“I know. You have to go. It's okay. You've been more to me than I deserved. Go on now, find him.”

“Thank you,” she responds, stopping just long enough to lean down and kiss him, brief and hesitant. Then she's gone. Kili hopes he sees her again, later.

 

-6-

When he first met Tauriel, he thought this: _now I know how to find something new._

Now when he looks at Tauriel he thinks this: _if God is dead, I shall pray to her._

It's probably the wrong thing.

 

-3-

He's lost a little more of himself today.

It was maybe, he thinks, the adrenaline of the fight-- or maybe the fact that he still wants ADAM-- or maybe the way he kissed Tauriel, her mouth open wide like something he could fall into. Maybe he lost more of himself because he's forgetting why she's frustrated with him, or maybe she's frustrated with him because he lost more of himself. Doesn't matter. All that matters is the fact that Kili misses who he was before he started splicing up.

 

-7-

“I wish you'd let me love you,” Kili's whispering against Tauriel's shoulder as she holds him tight and he hopes he's not hearing her cry, hopes he's hearing something else. “I'd do it wrong, now. Now that I'm this. I'd do it the way a wolf might, dragging dead things to your doorstep. Can't kiss you, not anymore. My mouth can taste like carcasses, but not yours. I'm afraid. My mother says I'm reckless.”

“You are,” Tauriel murmurs to his hair. “What was ADAM if not recklessness?”

“Thought it would help,” he says.

“You're not the first to think that,” she responds.

“I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid, I'm afraid--”

 

-10-

The universe contains, among other things, a little blue third planet that is mostly ocean, black holes large enough to swallow our solar system whole, so many, many stars, a galaxy that will one day collide with the Milky Way, and Kili's fragile, insignificant self.


	10. Bombur (entr'acte)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> -squints- what's this? a chapter where nobody dies, and that doesn't (totally) feel like an emotional kick in the gut by the end? well, think of it as the last calm before the storm. the storm being the last five chapters. they'll be a little... intense.

_From the audio diary of Bofur Broadbeam, 1957:_

> _Thorin's got us working on_ underwater trains _. This is a dream come true for Bif and I. Mechanics, right? We're easy to please. Bombur hates it down here but won't say as much to our faces. I can see it, though, in the way his eyes dart to the side before he tells us about his day. Maybe we'll move on later. Rapture can be a stopgap, same way everyplace else was. Maybe next we can try our luck across the pond proper. World'll be our oyster after a few paychecks and the completion of these trains, I'm sure of it._

 

 

 

\--

Bombur was not made for this, the _handling_ of pain. Or not in such high doses. No one who knew him would call Bombur _weak_ , no, never that (though those who did not know him might make the mistake). Still, he was not made for handling pain in such doses, and it's weighing on him like sandbags piled up atop his shoulders. Pain is not a person, and it cannot be talked down. Not that Bombur is good at talking, that was always Bofur. No, Bombur stays out of the way and doesn't make enemies. That doesn't work on pain either.

The physical pain is the most manageable. Bombur wasn't made for that either, really, but he can handle it in a way he can't handle the rest.

“My brother died for me,” he tells his own face in the mirror hanging in an office he and his cousin have decided to stay the night in, an office with one door that they can watch in turns. When he closes his eyes he can almost hear Bofur cracking a joke but his mind can't think one up. There's a space where the joke should be, in his mind. It reminds him of the space his brother should fill, in his heart.

\--

Here's the thing about Bombur: he is quiet. He is quiet and good-hearted and he believes in promises and laughter and a well-cooked meal. Rapture has none of these things. It used to, but all the good has been swept away by water pulled in from leaky pipes. And the thing about Bombur? He keeps believing. He has direction, of a sort. Purpose. And surely that means something.

Bifur signs promises of home to him when they stop walking and Bombur does all he can to cook a meal well with whatever they can find.

\--

There's not really anyone around to ask _what happened to Bofur?_ and Bombur's glad for that, takes it as a very small mercy. If there was, and if someone did, he might have to _tell_ them.

“My brother died for me.”

It's not easy to say to his reflection. It wouldn't be any easier to say to a person.

He imagines going back to Ireland and starting his life over and eventually having to answer _what happened to your brother?_ but maybe that'll never happen, maybe when they're back _home_ (home, to Bombur and Bifur being, of course, wherever they can get work) someone will ask if he's got any family and he'll be able to smile and say, “Bifur's all I have,” the same old words minus _and Bofur_ but otherwise just the same as ever. Same old, same old. And they'll nod and smile and leave it at that and Bombur will never have to say, “My brother died for me.”

And if anyone asks (no one does down here, no one will up there) he can say “something happened” and leave it at that and people can assume someone died (someone did) if they want but he'll never never have to _say_ it.

\--

Bombur cooks a lentil soup with radishes in it. Bifur eats as much of it as he can, unwilling to waste anything Bombur cooks. Bombur eats the rest, grimacing. He hates how lentil soup tastes with radishes in it but that's precisely why he made it that way. He needs to taste something unpleasant. Taste is like pain, can't be talked down, but it can be used to make him feel other things.

Bofur used to love the taste of radishes and lentils together and would not listen to Bombur's insistence that the two tastes aren't the least bit complimentary.

“It's an acquired taste,” Bofur would say, leaving Bombur to wonder who would take the time to acquire it.

\--

He built his life around constants, Bombur did, things he _knew_ to be true. The fact that his brother and cousin would walk _forever_ to get work if they had to, the fact that nomads can live perfectly pleasant lives, the fact that the sun comes up every morning. There are things in the world that will always be what they are and Bombur built his life around those things.

Now, of course, he believes less and less in even the simplest of truths.

The sun does not rise each morning, anymore. Or, _well,_ it does, but he can't see it. (And each day is a gift, each day he wakes up and takes a breath and presses the ache of an older brother that sits in his heart down, down, down into the crevices between bones, for tomorrow.) No amount of walking will bring back work and home. Or, _well,_ not until they find a way out. (And it's looking less and less like there is one, Bombur wonders whether there's even a point to crawling their way toward the bathysphere station; if there's a way out surely someone would have _said_ , surely they'd have heard more than rumours; someone came down but as far as they've heard, nobody's gone back up.) Constants have become a commodity.

And Bombur has nothing to offer for them.

But he has Bifur, and that's something. Bifur is not going to leave him.

\--

Bombur's dreams of his brother are burnished gold and dusted with a sleek blue-black, a vivid smile, a gentle voice, an older brother keeping him safe, right up until the end.

Once, Bofur was more than colours and abstract glimpses.

“My brother died for me,” Bombur says to his hands as he cleans his revolver. Bifur puts a hand on his knee and tries to smile like Bofur did.

It helps, in a way.

\--

“Down here we've become mice and monsters,” Bombur says, a little bit later, and Bifur raises a brow, ready to sign a question but he doesn't need to, Bombur just shakes his head. “It's dark, that's all.”

 _We will get out,_ Bifur signs, and Bombur shakes his head once more.

“Maybe we won't.”

_The bathyspheres--_

“No. Nobody's heard even a rumour of them going _up_ , we just know someone came down. Maybe it was a fluke. Bifur, if there's no way out...”

_So we should give up?_

“On leaving, maybe. Not surviving. Just until the wind changes. Until we hear something real. Hole up in some part of the city that isn't overrun. Spread word that we'll trade shelter for food. Get survivors together, if _I_ survived this long there have to be others.”

It was a pipe dream, leaving Rapture. Bombur knows that now, that's how he sees it, anyway. They're stuck, stuck, stuck.

 _Until the wind changes_ , Bifur signs back.

 


	11. Balin (sonata)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> short and ~~sweet~~ fucking tragic. sorry.

_From the audio diary of Tauriel, 1960:_

> _It has grown difficult. I know Legolas is still alive, he must be. I miss him terribly, how he'd cover my eyes with both hands and describe how_ he _sees the stars. Like a strip of light through old curtains. But that can't matter. He is gone, and I am alone. I thought Kili could help me find him but I could not stay with what he has become. I will keep searching for Legolas until I find him, but I know that in the end everything will be made equal by water._

 

 

 

\--

“My old bones weren't prepared for all this walking,” Balin says as they stop, as they sit, as they carve out a place to rest their feet for a little while, under the watchful gaze of a few flickering light bulbs and an old filing cabinet.

“It's my fault Fili died,” Kili says without prompting. Without reason, as far as Balin can tell, but Kili's thought process is getting less and less linear by the day so he supposes that his lack of understanding is not necessarily a sign of Kili not having _had_ a reason. “Uncle spliced up first, then me. I don't think he wanted to be next.”

He doesn't say anything else, and Balin does not press him for more, just leans back against the wall and cleans off his pistol.

The cold metal in his hand feels, in a way, like a reminder. Boys like Fili and Kili were always going to get swallowed whole by the mouth of this city, no way around it. Kili's kept going this long, but Balin worries that it's just a matter of time before something happens. He's seen enough splicers by now to know that they are not what they once were. And so every day the routine is all about getting up and walking and shooting and hearing Kili get less and less coherent. Rinse. Repeat.

Balin starts to think about his brother, and then very carefully resolves not to. Better not to go down that road. Balin used to scold Dwalin when their mother wasn't around to do it. Now Dwalin's not around to scold. So. It's not a problem. Really.

It's a Thursday afternoon (Balin's kept track, he feels he must) and they're walking, and Kili looks like he's going to say something, but then he's turning away, words swallowed up by the city. Gone. Devoured.

“Big Daddy,” Kili says instead, holding out an arm to stop Balin from going any farther. Kili looks like he's in the midst of an internal debate and Balin leaves him to it, content to wait until the danger passes but, oh, no, Kili's made his choice and takes aim at the thing in the diving suit.

Balin considers asking what he's doing, but Kili's already got his finger on the trigger. All he has to do is _pull_ it but Balin's already been a quick draw. There's a loud

_Bang!_

(of course there is, why on earth was Balin expecting something else)

and Kili lets out a gasp.

It's not what Kili had  _expected_ and the gun clatters to the ground as he presses his hand to his abdomen, where the bullet tore through flesh.

“I'm sorry,” Balin says as the next two shots go through his head. The Big Daddy up ahead turns to look but does not come any closer. Balin tries to ignore the child it has with it, tries to pretend that stopping Kili saved the child and that saving the child makes this _okay._ It doesn't, of course. Kili is (was) barely more than a child himself, splicing up because he thought it might help and losing himself to bad decisions. He wouldn't be the first young man to do that. He won't be the last. Balin would consider mistakes part of life if they weren't _DNA-altering_. If they weren't _murder-inducing_. He pretends he made the right call but, no, he just put down Dis' son and he's not sure he can forgive himself for that.

“I'm sorry, laddie,” Balin says to the body at his feet, voice slightly wobbly. He wants to shut his eyes so he doesn't have to see the corpse that was once Kili, but he doesn't. On the ground, Kili's eyes have closed, and for some reason that feels like condemnation. Kili's fingers shift, a final death-twitch, and then he is still. Balin will not let himself look away from what he has done.

Balin both _is_ and is _not_ sure of this decision. He both _is_ and is _not_ ashamed. But as that feeling snakes into his chest he wonders what he was supposed to have done instead? Let Kili attack the monster? Let Kili get torn apart by the drill, or succeed in killing the monster only to harvest the girl? Let Kili say _this is the last time_? What would have stopped Kili from going after the next one? What would have prevented him from going after a Little Sister after they find Dwalin (and they-- no, he--  _will_ find Dwalin), making Dwalin (shield-blood, shield blood blood blood) leap to his defence? What would have prevented Kili from losing his mind? _Nothing_ but a bullet. Balin didn't have a choice, he didn't.

(He did.)

( _did_ and did _not_ )

He is still sorry, because Kili looks so small, on the floor, crumpled, broken, and at last he lets himself turn away. Lets himself take a few steps. Lets himself  _leave_.

Behind him, Kili is not moving, will never move. Balin moves away from what he's taken from Dis and Thorin (if either of them are still out there, _if_ ) and drags himself, step by step, onward. He has not found Dwalin yet, but no place could be darker than this.

He will not speak of this again.

 


	12. Nori (bel canto)

_From the audio diary of Balin Fundinson, 1957:_

> _Things are growing tense. Anyone with an understanding of economic systems can see that Rapture won't function the way Andrew Ryan intends forever, but one can only hope that we can adapt. Another hired gun went after Thorin. Dressed in all black and brown, just like the last ones. If this is Azog again... Well, Dwalin and I shall discuss this with Dis. Perhaps we will returning to England sooner than we anticipated._

 

 

 

\--

The bar is poorly lit and utterly deserted, which makes it a good place, in Nori's opinion, to drown his demons. Nobody's bothered him for hours, not even a single splicer, so he pours a drink for each of his regrets in turn.

When he hears the sound of a door opening and shutting behind him he can barely find the energy to turn round and greet whoever came in, or not at first. The startled half-whispered “Nori?” pulls him from his wallowing and he turns, comes face to face with Dori, with Dwalin, with wide eyes meeting his own, with endless questions like, _Why here?_ and _Why do you look so hollow?_

He doesn't ask those questions, nor does he receive any. Instead, he closes his eyes as if not being able to see his brother's face will make all this less painful. Because Nori _understands_ , he _gets it_. Nori knows they're all going to die down here, that there's no way out, that Ryan's utopia has taken its sweet time killing them all.

Killing whatever they were.

Or could have been.

And instead of a quick death, they were each given a slow one, and into their bodies every citizen of Rapture has taken a poison.

He _understands_. Rapture will kill them all, just as surely as it's killed everyone else.

And so Nori doesn't know how long he stands there, trying to pretend they're not looking at him, does not know how long it takes him to even his breathing out and grab hold of his last vestiges of sobriety. He can't utter a single word until he hears Dori speak again, “Nori, where have you _been?”_

“Took a job,” he answers, trying so hard not to let his voice shake. They don't _know_ , they have no way of knowing. No way of knowing that there's no way out of Rapture other than with a _bullet._ “Nobody had a _plan_ , we were just going in circles, so I took a job. Head-on, right Dori? Flat-out. All stops pulled. Side bets are for people with time, we had to play to win.”

“So did you?” Dori asks.

“Did I what?”

“Win.”

Nori's pause lasts no longer than a second but it feels like that second is stretching on and on, forever, and Nori spends that very long second trying to find out how to turn the hopeless, broken-hearted feeling right behind his sternum into words, words that will soften the blow, because Dori is important, Dori is important and needs to live, needs to live so someone can take care of Ori, because Nori can't, he's broken and he failed.

“Game's been rigged, Dori. Bathyspheres are still locked down. No, I didn't win.”

And Dori's face is the picture of crushed hope and Nori wonders what he's going to tell Ori. Dwalin's hands clench into fists and Nori knows Dwalin's not mad at _him_ but he takes a step back anyway because it feels right. He's calm, calm as anything. He can thank the whiskey for that, he imagines, and for the fact that all he wants to do is curl up and go to sleep, pretend this was all a dream.

But he doesn't. He watches Dori, watches Dwalin, watches Dori and Dwalin who are watching him and Dori speaks again, and _why are all these short little seconds taking so long?_

“Are you _drunk?”_

“Not drunk enough. This has all been too much, see. All these revelations. A lifelong learner is me, and my lifelong is getting shorter.”

“Don't say that,” Dori says and Nori shakes his head. Nori can hear in his brother's voice all the disappointment and love and anger and hurt. Dori's words are heavy with all of this feeling.

Nori opens his mouth, but his words die in his throat and he nearly chokes on them. His mouth tastes like dirt instead of whiskey. _Why not?_ he thinks _Why shouldn't I say that?_

“I'll say what I want. You're not Ma,” he says instead.

“Nori just because you think you found out the bathysphere are locked--”

“No. They are. We're all _stuck_ , Dori. Outplayed, or-- no. Cheated. Outplayed and cheated are different things. You can't make this aces, you _can't_ make everything aces by hoping unless you count your cards and we don't _have any!"_ he shouts, then takes a breath. "Be careful out there, when you go.”

Nori wants to say more, wants to say, _**If** you go, but please don't go Dori, please, I'm only yelling because I'm broken and drunk. Please don't go_.

But Nori doesn't say any that, he only thinks it.

“I'm not leaving you,” Dori says and Nori wonders if his brother's mouth tastes like dirt, too.

“You should. There's no point in staying, and I'm not leaving.”

And then, at last, Dwalin finds his words. Nori wonders if he should be grateful when he sees Dwalin open his mouth and snarl, “Fuck this.” Those words, directed at Nori, raw and rough and angry. Like meat, maybe. “You can wallow in pity if you want to, or you can come with us, _help_ us find some other way _out_ of here.”

“There _is_ no other way out--” Nori begins, but Dwalin isn't finished, it seems.

“So we should roll over and give up?”

“ _Yes!_ ” Nori shouts, desperate, watching Dori collapse in on himself like a broken-winged bird, just for a moment. “Or _I_ should. You two can keep on _hoping_ if you have to. Pretend it's all roses and ignore the shit-smell underneath.”

Nori watches Dori take a breath and does the same. His brother makes a frustrated sound, clenching and unclenching his hands around the hem of his shirt, does _not_ hit Nori, but Nori can tell he's at least considering it.

“You can't,” Dori says at last, through his teeth.

“No, _you_ can't. You're _not Ma_!”

“I'm not trying to be.”

Nori laughs at that, harsh and bitter, and half a cough. Love for Dori is not enough. He takes a breath in and lets it out. This isn't about Nori, can't be. He very carefully does not look at Dwalin, lest he have to argue with _both_ of them at once, and locks eyes with Dori. “Why don't you run on back to Ori now, all right? Bet he misses you, wherever you stashed him. Can't get out from Mother Dori's nest even here.”

And then.

“Ori is dead!” Dori shouts, like an animal almost.

Very un-Dori.

Almost.

And then Dori says it again, as if Nori could have missed it the first time.

“Ori is dead.”

And Nori clutches the bar as if he might fall to the floor without it (he will). He tries to take another deep breath but he _can't_ , can't take a breath at all, can't remember when he last took a breath, can't remember how to breathe. It has been only seconds since Dori _said that_ but it feels like days or months or years and years since. Nori can't remember how breathing feels and his heart is beating in his ears. How does breathing go?

“Ori is dead.”

Because saying it twice wasn't enough. Nori finally gasps for breath, and the air slides into his lungs with the ease of a dagger.

(that is to say: with no ease at all)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> so _everyone_ learnt something new this chapter would you look at that--
> 
> also, i love writing dori-nori fights *flies away*


	13. Dwalin (coda)

Later, Dwalin will remember Nori like this: draped across the bar stool like an open book, too thin (or thinner than Dwalin remembers him ever being, anyway, thinner than he was back when things were _better_ ), Nori looking less like a person and more like a graft of skin better suited to a different set of bones. Skin from a brand new world.

But that remembering will happen later, after Nori's gone, and Dwalin's gone too.

Dwalin still has a hard time articulating the issue that _is this,_ this place, this Rapture, and the hopelessness that comes with it. He doesn't let the hopelessness show on his face, not around Dori who is keeping strong because he feels it's a duty, but it's there. Maybe he needn't bother, as Dori had collapsed under the weight of all he was carrying a few hours back. Dori's collapsed like a house of cards (under the weight of Ori's death and Nori's accusations and the fact that he had to say aloud what happened to their youngest brother). Dwalin had watched.

It's difficult to believe, Dwalin thinks, in chance encounters and finding Nori, in irritating little pickpockets with gambling metaphors and good intentions but, _look,_ even after the brothers are done screaming at each other... Nori's still there, still real.

As proof, there's a clip of ammunition missing from the pocket of Dwalin's jacket and a residual shaking in his hands.

(He's still angry.

Nori noticed, and took his bullets away.

See? _Real._

The most real thing Dwalin's seen in... well.)

“No splicers around here,” Nori's saying, seeming to notice that Dwalin is on-edge even if he doesn't know precisely  _why_ that is. Nori's observant.

“How can you be sure?”

“No ADAM. No Sisters. Why would they _want_ to come here? At most we'll see a few stragglers, but they leave you alone if you don't look too hard at 'em, often as not.”

And if Dwalin is surprisingly reassured by that, that's his business. Not Nori's. Just. _Forget about it._

He can't, though, keeps thinking about the odds that something will burst into this pub they've holed up in and ruin these few precious moments of peace. He _keeps thinking about it,_ because he has nothing else to do.

\--

Dwalin will remember Nori's feigned nonchalance, afterwards.

“It's good - I missed you. It's good to see you again,” Dwalin says, because he has nothing _else_ to say.

“You, too,” Nori replies, softening. Just around the eyes. He still looks angry, otherwise, and a touch defeated. Same as he's looked since Dori decided to tell him about the fate of his younger brother. Maybe when he sobers up a bit, he'll hide it all a bit better but for the moment, his face is an open book and Dwalin's noticed that telltale softening around the eyes. Still, it's something.

“Dori couldn't find you, thought you were...” Dwalin trails off, nearly bites his tongue. Nori's eyes widen and he glances to the door, as if he's looking for an escape route, from this, from everything. He takes one step toward the door, then two steps, three, before stopping. Dwalin just watches, and feels (in his chest) a desperate urge to prove himself trustworthy, to prove _something._ “But you're not.”

“I wanted to come find him,” Nori blurts out, words tripping over themselves, falling from his mouth and breaking their necks on the ground. He's usually more articulate, but Dwalin's never seen him this intoxicated before.

“Doesn't matter. He found you.”

“Yeah, he - he did.”

“You haven't... seen _Balin,_ have you? Or Thorin? Or...” Dwalin tries, trails off. He feels awkward asking, and Nori's expression is softer and more solemn.

“No. Not for days and days,” Nori replies, eyes darting to and from Dwalin's, like a moth considering the suicide of light.

“Oh. Worth a try.”

“We can - we can look. Maybe. After you've both rested and I've - I've sobered up some. Get walking. If they're still around, we'll find them,” Nori says, voice soft, as if worried about the weight of his words, as if heavier syllables could shatter glass. “I'll come too. Sat around here too damn long, even if there's no way back that doesn't mean we should leave old Balin to fend for himself. Or Thorin, god knows what he's getting up to without you there to watch him.”

“I'd like that,” Dwalin replies, equally soft, equally careful. A smile threatens to form, even though he knows it shouldn't, knows there's no reason for one, knows there's _nothing_. Or nothing but Nori, because Nori could never be nothing.

\--

Nori's pacing, slept all through the night and most of the next day until Dori kicked him in the ribs. Lightly. Just enough to wake him up. A startled gasp had torn itself from Nori's lips but he did wake up, and now he's pacing. Dori's in the corner, still as stones on a bar stool he'd dragged away from the bar. The air smells like rust, like blood. Like old metal and new wounds.

Dwalin can't remember the last time he's felt like anything other than metal, raw and well-heated, simultaneously malleable and unwilling to be touched by bare hands. His spine is iron. It is Nori's breath that tastes like metal now, though, like rust. He was injured sometime back. He neglected to mention it. Dori only noticed this morning and Dwalin wants to kick himself for having missed it.

Dwalin looks up at Nori (still pacing) from his chair and opens his mouth to say,

\--

(and Nori replies,)

\--

Later he will remember how well the two of them fit together, how Nori fidgeted and Dwalin held him close and Nori said that Dwalin felt _reassuring_ or _solid_ or something like that, how Nori's heartbeat felt under Dwalin's palm. He'll remember it, after they're gone.

This is before that, though, and Nori's still relearning how to trust him.

But: Nori, Nori _Nori Nori Nori._ Dwalin wants to hold him forever, shield him from everything that this place is. His name on Dwalin's tongue tastes sweet, like late-summer honeysuckle.

\--

The last time Dwalin sees Nori alive, Nori is angry with him.

“ _What_ do you think you're doing?” Nori demands when he catches up to Dwalin. It's somewhere around four days after Dwalin left.

“Looking for Balin,” he retorts, and this all feels wrong, an unfitting end to them. He had left when Nori was sleeping just to avoid this. He had planned to come _back_  once he found Balin, but he could not find the courage to say to Nori: _I'm willing to die to find my brother, please don't come with me if it means leaving yours._

This is _not_ the way it's supposed to go. Nori bereft. Nori glaring at him. Nori with a pistol in each hand and the smell of blood in the air. Nori looking at him and begging _please, please, please don't die, you just found me, don't leave me, you can't leave already._

What Dwalin will remember most, after the end – if there is in fact just one thing – is Nori's eyes, steely, hazel. That he'll remember Nori's eyes _means_ something, Dwalin is sure.

“Why would you go alone?” Nori's demanding and Dwalin wants to retort:

 _Why shouldn't I? This is my burden, what do I have_ left _to lay at your feet?_

But he doesn't.

Instead he murmurs promises of coming back for Nori, promises of fixing things, of getting them all out with or without the biolock on the bathyspheres, of saving Nori, saving Balin, saving Dori, saving himself, _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I love you, please, I love you and I shouldn't have gone off alone but wouldn't you have done the same?_

The words knot up, twisting around and around one another like a spiral. It all means the same thing anyway. He lets Nori lay his head on his lap (Nori with his fear of abandonment and ill-fitting skin) and idly combs his fingers through long, tangled hair. He hopes Nori understands.

But Dwalin's real crime is this: he cannot remember what Nori says back.

So maybe this is not the last time he saw Nori. It can't be. What sort of ending is _this?_

\--

Later, Dwalin will remember Nori like this: valiant and furious, hurrying to catch up to Dwalin as he meanders through corridors and guns down splicers. Because as Dwalin searches for his older brother

( _Balin can't be dead, can't have died, he's out there, I can find him, please, he's my brother_ )

he comes across a splicer that sticks to the ceilings and moves far too quick to gun down with ease, that jumps across the room, teleports even, that sets him on fire, that is _more_ than a match for him.

He's going to die, alone.

Or he thinks he is, but then he hears the sound of a revolver firing and turns, looks, sees _Nori_ there, watches him land a well-aimed shot, lets relief wash over him like waves that can lessen even the pain of those brand new, very deep burns on his skin.

He's _all_ burnt up.

But he's alive. For now.

And Nori? Well, Nori _saved_ him.

But less than a minute later, Dwalin finds himself unable to return the favour. A gibbering, half-mad splicer gets off a lucky shot. The bullet hits Nori. Dwalin cries out, _No, no, no!_  Nori's startled gasp sounds like the scraping of a shovel on the ground, then Nori _hits_ the ground.

\--

Dwalin wonders, was seeing Nori's _body_ the last time he saw Nori?

No, of course it wasn't. It couldn't have been.

He wants to say the world would not be that cruel. He _would_ say that, if he could believe it.

\--

In his head he rewrites it – whatever, whatever that truly _final_ moment is – grabs Nori's hands and says all the things he'd meant to. The script changes whenever he closes his eyes.

_I love you._

_I'm sorry._

_You mattered._

_I love you._

_I'm sorry._

_You mattered._

_I_

_You_

_I_

_You_

_Love_

_Sorry_

_Mattered_

It's a quiet tap-tap on the back of Dwalin's skull, a heartbeat he does not deserve. In his mind what matters is that he is able to say _something_ , that Nori _knows_. Nori does not have to forgive Dwalin for leaving in the night without a word. He does not have to love Dwalin _back_. Dwalin only wants him to know. To understand.

But no: he is gone, and Nori is gone, and he is gone. There is no ending. Only this, Dwalin bleeding out on the floor. His cooling body next to Nori's cold one. His own voice slowly blending (bleeding) into a murmur until even it becomes silent.

\--

“I'm scared,” Nori whispers, words dropping from his mouth like wilted flower petals, fragile and hanging in the air as they fall. The moment for Dwalin to say something reassuring rushes in and passes and he is left with an open empty mouth and _what do I say? It'll be all right? Bull **shit**_   _it'll be all right._ _  
_

He reaches out, puts a hand on Nori's shoulder. Doesn't say anything. Nori can hardly move but he manages to bump up against Dwalin's hand as he turns to look at him, eyes vulnerable, afraid. _I'm bleeding, Dwalin._ If only Dwalin wasn't dying too. If only Dwalin could remake his useless, burnt-up skin and bones into the armour Nori deserves.

“I was seven,” Nori's whispering, voice softer than Dwalin's ever heard it. He can barely hear him. “The first time I picked a pocket.” He pauses, lets out a strangled, coughing sound that could (maybe) be a laugh. “Didn't even get caught. Fella noticed his wallet gone about two minutes after but I was already part of the crowd. I don't know why I'm thinking about it.”

“I stole a candy bar from a corner store once,” Dwalin murmurs, and Nori looks a Dwalin like he's drowning and Dwalin's a lifeline. As if memories can keep Nori alive.

Dwalin remembers half the kids in the neighbourhood stole from that convenience store, that the proprietor, an old, balding man with an absurd moustache, kept trying to catch them at it but that he couldn't keep an eye on four or five or fifteen kids at once. Dwalin remembers he only stole that candy bar because a kid three years younger than him was crying. The sun had gone down, his hands had shaken. He'd not stolen anything before, or since, but he didn't have any money, and he couldn't have let that little girl cry, now, could he?

That's not what he says, though. He says, “Of course, I confessed right after. Never was one for breaking rules. Balin yelled at me for so long he went horse.” Nori huffs a laugh. Dwalin loves him. This has never stopped being true. He wraps his arms around Nori and holds him, tries to pretend it'll all be okay.

\--

Later, Dwalin will remember Nori like this: happy.


	14. Thorin (reprise)

Here's the thing about Thorin: he is broken. He tried to take too much weight upon his shoulders and it cracked him straight down the middle. He didn't even notice, or wouldn't have but for the way it made his voice shake and the ache of ADAM in his bones, the ache that comes with and without ADAM.

This is what it comes down to: Thorin resting his head on Bilbo's leg, mumbling incoherencies under his breath and looking into Bilbo's eyes, feeling the weight of Bilbo's hand on his head, the shaky rhythm of Bilbo's breathing. A gasp, here, now, from his own lips as Bilbo presses a dishtowel against the bullet wound in his shoulder.

His teeth, clenched.

_We have to move on, Mister Baggins._

This is what he notices: ruin, blood, and broken things. A splicer dead on the ground, his skull caved in. Andrew Ryan's voice blaring. His own heartbeat is quickening. He's anxious and _has_ to move on (does he?) (do you, Thorin?) (where are you even going?) (somewhere with ADAM).

This is what he knows with certainty: he has a gun in his hands, and he must protect Bilbo Baggins. His heart is still beating, which means he is alive. He misses his nephews, hopes he'll find them before the worst happens. The city is ruined.

\--

Bilbo Baggins is the most beautiful thing he's ever seen (has he ever seen?) (has he seen?) (no) (no. no. no. no. no.)

Maybe Bilbo is fleeting, as if he'll vanish if Thorin takes his eyes off of him. His broken finger healed up crooked but it can still pull a trigger.

He hasn't scarred since the ADAM.

Or he doesn't think he has. Bilbo thinks Thorin doesn't notice he's breaking mirrors before Thorin can get to them.

\--

The city's bones are breaking, its jaw bleeding, broken, wrenched off to display a gaping maw in its place, that's what the city has become (what the city has turned into) (what Thorin has turned into?) (no, that doesn't even make sense).

This city is where Thorin loved, was loved. The only place left that _knows_ him. The city knows him, and he knows it, and he wants to go _home_. Wants to go somewhere where the city doesn't know every molecule of his DNA. The weight of fourteen people (a company) ( _his_ company) has lifted, but that's only because he _lost_ them. All of them. His nephews and employees and friends and and and and and and--

\--

“Please don't leave me.”

“Thorin, I am not going to leave you.”

\--

Thorin thinks he needs a warning label. _Handle with care_ or _Caution_ or _Warning: Violent_ but that last one isn't a real label, he's never had to slap _that_ onto anything he's shipped out.

Thorin's weapons know him better than he knows himself.

\--

“I gave, Bilbo. All I could. Because I knew even then that it wouldn't last. Once things started looking bad-- Mister Baggins, Bilbo, Mister Ba-- do you think my family is still alive?”

\--

When they run into Balin, Thorin is _sure_ it's a dream, or a memory seeping into the present. He's _sure_. So sure, in fact, that he walks right past him, and it's only Bilbo stopping short that causes him to turn back.

“You see him, too?” Thorin asks, eyes wide with hope.

And Bilbo says, _“Yes._ ”

\--

Balin tells them about the fate of his nephews and Thorin crumples. He doesn't go into detail at first, merely says “Fili and Kili are dead” but that is enough.

Somewhere in the world the sun is rising but at the bottom of the ocean, it doesn't matter. Thorin can no longer remember the surface. He no longer wants to. Fili and Kili are dead.

Thorin rolls the last memories of the boys over and around in his mind, trying to recall each detail. Hold onto that last time he saw them. Before they got separated by circumstance. He failed to hold them tightly enough and they slipped through his fingers like water, water, water. Like water.

And then he's gone, crying, like it's the end of the world, like he's giving up completely. Fili and Kili are dead. Thorin thinks about the weight of the cartridge in his back pocket, lets out a shuddering sigh, and resolutely does _not_ touch the gun.

“I'm sorry,” Balin is saying and those words are enough to penetrate the roar of Thorin's thoughts. “I couldn't stop Kili from--”

And he cuts off, and Thorin is staring at him, wide-eyed, and that is likely why he cuts off, but Thorin is staring, staring, staring.

 _Is it your fault?_ he wants to shout, the words threatening to tear their way out of his throat if only he'd let them but, no, they're stuck, buried under a torrent of sobs. The kind of sobbing that only comes when a person is too full of grief. Thorin has not cried like this since his parents and brother were buried. He's angry and afraid and it feels like his heart is ripping open, he's lost the boys and _it's Balin's fault_.

Isn't it?

 _Isn't_ it?

\--

They walk, in the dark. Thorin and Bilbo and Balin. Sometimes Balin and Bilbo whisper when Thorin is out of earshot. Thorin does not know what they whisper about and sometimes he doesn't only care, can't bring himself to care about anything but the lack of ADAM burning invisible holes in his veins.

He feels tears running down his cheeks and as he wipes them away he can't remember why he's crying.

He hopes they find Fili and Kili soon.

He misses them.

It's hard to recall...

\--

“I'm sorry,” Balin is whispering to him as they walk and Thorin blinks one, two, three times. He hears a door open and closes his eyes. It's only Bilbo. It's only Bilbo. It's not a danger. It's only Bilbo.

“Balin?” he tries, wondering what he _means_. That word is full of all the hope he has left, even though hope seems misplaced somehow.

“About the boys.”

Thorin opens his eyes, meets Balin's eyes, Balin is looking at Thorin like it is the end of the world, looking at Thorin like Thorin is lost, like Balin is lost, but mostly like _Thorin_ is lost, and isn't it true? It is, it's true. They're all lost.

“What about the boys?”

“I had to stop Kili.”

Thorin feels like he's missing part of the conversation, like he only has bits and pieces and he has to put them together on his own.

 _Why did you need to stop him?_ is what he wants to ask but instead he can only manage “ _How_?”

“Thorin. You know how.”

And Thorin does.

\--

It doesn't feel like killing Balin, he reflects, as he brings the bit of piping down on his cousin's head.

It doesn't feel like anything at all.

\--

And in the aftermath, he is breathing, heavy, and finally finally _finally_ recognises the sound of Bilbo shouting, yelling, shouting and shouting ( _at you, Thorin, he's shouting at_ _ **you**_ ). And he turns just in time to see the barrel of the gun and

then

he

feels

hollow.

Thorin is... surprised, mostly. He hadn't expected Bilbo to _do_ this, or he doesn't remember expecting it. His zigzagging memory is twisted about by the blood loss. He _feels_ surprised, at any rate.

“I couldn't _fix_ you,” Bilbo's whispering, tears in his eyes. “I'm sorry. Maybe I should have tried harder.”

“Maybe it's a plan,” Thorin whispers back with his final breath. “Maybe it's providence.”

\--

Or maybe he doesn't whisper that at all.

Maybe he only says _farewell_.

 


	15. Bilbo (finale)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's done we're done! or at least for now. there miiiiight or might not be a fellowship-centric sequel in the future. we'll see.

Bilbo opens the door. There is nothing significant about the room he finds himself in, other than the fact that Thorin's corpse is not in it. Though in his current state, that fact is more significant than anything. They couldn't reach the bathyspheres. They couldn't leave. They died down here, Thorin and Balin, Fili and Kili, and probably everyone else as well.

Dead, probably, or spliced-up, or... Bilbo wishes he could say which is worse, dying or losing oneself to ADAM, but he can't. They are all but equal.

They are equally horrible fates and now he is alone. Thorin killed Balin, Bilbo killed Thorin, and now Bilbo Baggins is alone, growing chilly in the re-purposed Rapture air.

He misses fireplaces. Reflecting on that, he finds it _such_ an odd thing to miss, but to him they've symbolised the comforts of home for so long the two concepts might as well be synonymous. A roaring fire, a book, a cup of tea... he misses all of that. Because now he has... what? A gun, a torn waistcoat, a thermos of cold canned soup?

He leans against the wall and is wholly unsurprised when exhaustion claims him. He had been swaying from side to side as he ran into the room, so he figures it was just a matter of time before his legs gave out.

“I'm sorry, Thorin,” he tells the empty room (the room without Thorin's corpse).

He aches.

He aches and aches and aches.

His voice shakes.

He thinks he might hear the jumbled-word jibbering of splicers a little ways off but he can't bring himself to care. Let them attack him. Not only does he have no ADAM, he's  
aching  
and  
alone.

His hair has grown just a little too long in the time that they've been wandering, curls spilling out from his head like blood from a wound.

A torrent of emotions is bubbling up inside him and Bilbo tries to sort them out, to toss them into piles labelled _keep_ and _bottle up_.

The anger is a waste of time, especially when he doesn't know who he's angry at. Thorin or Andrew Ryan or himself or everyone or Rapture.

The exhaustion is not something he can push down. It's spreading through his limbs now and he feels like he's made of cotton.

(His hands do not shake as he checks his gun. Three rounds.)

(The worst part about this is that he did not see any of it coming. Think the words _blind spot_ , in Thorin's voice, or at least in the gravelly murmur that Thorin's voice takes up when processed through the echo-chamber of Bilbo Baggins' memories. The worst part is that he tried to convince himself that Throin would be fine, that his mind was okay, that he could hang on until they reached the surface. Or maybe the worst part is that he failed to truly convince himself of any of that.)

Fine, then. Thorin was Bilbo's blind spot. Even just thinking it feels like an accusation. He should have done more. But from that first taste of ADAM, Thorin was lost. ADAM-sickness, madness, hunger, hunger, _hunger_. Like a dragon that could never be satisfied with a pittance of treasure, Thorin _hoarded_ power. Plasmids that could turn his very DNA into a weapon. A hoard  
of  
power.

He should be mad at Thorin, probably, but his emotions missed their mark and now he's weeping. His hands shake.

And nobody's around to see, because Balin and Thorin are dead and in the other room, so they can't _see_.

(A footnote on Balin: Bilbo respected him. He knew Thorin loved him. His death was the only thing that would have ever convinced Bilbo that Thorin had well and truly lost it. Thorin's ramblings, his single-minded obsessions, his madness-staggered thoughts... none of that was enough.)

(Balin's death was in many ways inevitable. Of course, it would have been easier for Bilbo if it wasn't, but Rapture never made things easier for anyone.)

Bilbo can hear splicers outside the door and part of him wants to get out of there but, no, that would be... like running. Like giving up. And of course, that's what he _wants_ to do. He has three bullets in his gun and Thorin is dead. But insead of running, he waits.

And they enter. Two of them. Gibbering. Mad. Dangerous. Eying Bilbo up like they don't know what to make of him.

Bilbo doesn't know what to make of himself, so he supposes that's fair. All he has left to him is the empty space Thorin once took up and a longing for home so great he can barely breathe. He wants to go _home_ , and look how well that worked out.

Bilbo laughs, a harsh and choked sound, and fires at the splicer to the left, because he does not want to die. He looks the splicer in the eyes as he shoots and he wishes he didn't have to. He had never used a weapon before coming to Rapture, not once. He used to read books and tend a garden. He looks at the splicer, and the splicer looks back at him. Then something snap-cracks in the splicer's face and he pulls out a knife and steps closer. The splicer looks at him with some sort of sick madness. Leans in close and breathes, “Poor little thing. What happened to _you_?”

And Bilbo fires again, and this time the bullet must have hit something vital, because the splicer slumps to the ground, and the roar of the gun echoes in Bilbo's ears. He's used two bullets on this one, meaning he has just one to use on the second.

He does not want to die, so he has to kill them, and he hates that, and he hates that, and he _hates_ that. These splicers were once a lot like Thorin was once. _People_. But now, the second splicer is lunging for Bilbo's throat (can't breathe can't breathe can't breathe), hands clasped tight on Bilbo's windpipe. And Bilbo wants too be angry, or scared, or at least a little worried but instead he's just surprised. The harsh pressure on his throat has him clawing at the splicer's arms but he doesn't seem to notice. “Let me go,” he gasps.

“No,” the splicer replies. “No no no no no no no.”

Like a chant. A prayer. And Bilbo's running out of oxygen; too late, he scrabbles uselessly at the too-strong hands that hold his throat. The splicer watches him, shaking but merciless, and Bilbo has enough time to recognize the look on his face as confusion.

And then there is nothing.

When he wakes, he is alone, sprawled out on the floor like something tossed aside.

When he wakes, it is with a nausea bubbling in his stomach and a sick uncertainty: he does not know whether he has won or lost. He just knows that the splicer he shot is still in the room with him. The one who choked him has moved on. His gun is lying next to him, and next to _it_ are four more bullets.


End file.
